Donald Trump, the billionaire entrepeneur and television show host who, it is rumored, may run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012, announces he has sent a team of his own private investigators to Hawaii to learn if President Obama was actually born there. Trump has repeatedly proclaimed his doubts over Obama’s citizenship, almost single-handedly reviving the “birther” controversy from 2008-09 (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, and April 7, 2011). Trump tells an NBC reporter that his investigators might uncover “one of the greatest cons in the history of politics and beyond.… I have people that have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding” (see April 7, 2011). Trump asserts, falsely, that Obama has “spent $2 million in legal fees trying on to get away from this issue (see April 7-10, 2011), and if it weren’t an issue, why wouldn’t he just solve it?” He says that Obama’s US citizenship may be “one of the greatest scams in the history of politics and in the history, period.… Right now, I have real doubts.” Recent CNN polls show that three-quarters of Americans believe Obama is an American citizen, but 43 percent of Republicans believe he is not. Trump says he will announce his decision to run for president after his television show, Celebrity Apprentice, finishes its season run. He brags: “I hate to say it. I have the No. 1 show on NBC. Is that the correct statement? The Celebrity Apprentice is doing great. You’re not allowed to have a show on and be a candidate. It’s a great show and it’s got phenomenal ratings, and until that show is over I can’t declare, otherwise NBC would have to take the show off the air and that would be very unfair.” The show’s final episode will air in mid-May 2011. [CNN, 4/7/2009; Huffington Post, 4/7/2011]

Washington pundits are split as to whether billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump is serious about mounting a run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. Recently, Trump has unleashed a barrage of criticism and allegations as to President Obama’s status as a US citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, and April 7, 2011), and has encouraged the rumor that he intends to run. Current polls show Trump running a strong second behind former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA), tied with former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AK), and well ahead of other Republican luminaries such as Sarah Palin (R-AK) and Newt Gingrich (R-GA) in a hypothetical 2012 primary battle. Tea party supporters choose Trump as their top candidate, well ahead of Romney and Huckabee. Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza notes that as recently as 2007, Trump was openly contemptuous of many Republican policies, and touted then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as “the best.” After questioning a number of political strategists, Cillizza determines that Trump is doing well in preliminary polls because of his enormous name recognition, his combative style, and his apparent business acumen. Democratic strategist Peter Hart says that tea partiers have abandoned Palin in large part for Trump, whom he calls “their current flavor du jour.” A Republican strategist who refuses to allow his name to be used says voters “like the no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners approach that Trump seems to take.” And Trump’s success at forging a billion-dollar financial empire gives some people “economic hope,” according to Republican consultant Carl Forti. “They want a job.… Trump’s a businessman, so in theory, he knows what he’s doing.” Republican strategist Alex Vogel predicts that Trump’s popularity will fizzle within days of actually entering the race, saying: “It is a huge mistake for people to confuse fame with electability or seriousness of candidacy. If fame was all it took, [American Idol creator] Simon Cowell could pick presidents and not just rock stars.” Cillizza says that Trump’s current popularity speaks more to the volatility of the Republican primary field than a real movement among Republicans to put Trump in the White House. [Washington Post, 4/7/2011] Progressive Washington pundit Steve Benen is less charitable than Cillizza, noting that “Trump has been running around to every media outlet he can find, spewing conspiracy theories and bizarre ideas that resonate with easily-fooled extremists. And wouldn’t you know it, polls suddenly show Republican voters gravitating to the guy.… When a clownish television personality plays to their worst instincts, these folks are inclined to like what they see.” Benen calls Trump’s potential nothing more than “an elaborate publicity stunt, closer to a practical joke than an actual campaign.” He concludes: “[W]hat matters here is what the latest polls tell us about the hysterical wing of the Republican Party. A reality-show personality has been whining incessantly about the president’s birth certificate, and a sizeable contingent of the GOP base has decided that’s enough to earn their support. Trump’s a sideshow. The real story here is the madness that’s overcome a few too many Republican voters.” [Washington Monthly, 4/7/2011]

Donald Trump, the billionaire entrepeneur and television show host who, it is rumored, may run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012, announces that he intends to meet with tea party organizers and an Arizona legislator to discuss an Arizona bill that would require candidates for president to prove that they are natural born citizens (see April 13-15, 2011). Trump has repeatedly expressed his doubts that President Obama is a US citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, and April 7-10, 2011). Trump intends to meet with Arizona Representative Carl Seel (R-AZ), who sponsored the bill. Seel says, “I’m honored to get the ability to meet with him and discuss it, and I want to thank him for being such a supporter of this issue.” Also at the meeting will be Kelly Townsend, who co-founded the Greater Phoenix Tea Party. Townsend says of Seel’s proposal: “It’s not a birther bill. It’s not about Mr. Obama. It’s about preventing any questions from coming up in the future, putting something in place so no one could question it.” However, Seel’s office issues a press release stating that Trump “has brought the issue of President Barack Obama failing to provide a birth certificate front and center recently.” [New York Times, 4/7/2011]

Donald Trump and Meredith Vieira on NBC’s ‘Today Show.’ [Source: Slapblog (.com)]Billionaire Donald Trump, the host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, reportedly considers running for president in 2012 as a Republican. Trump has made similar claims in 1988 and 2000, but those were, according to Media Bistro, “just publicity stunts.” Trump is focusing on the “birther” controversy, claims from some on the right that President Obama is not a naturally-born American citizen. Though Obama has produced his birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) and satisfied constitutional requirements for proving his eligibility to serve as president, Trump and many “birthers” insist that he is actually a Kenyan citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, and April 1-8, 2011). Today, Trump takes part in contentious interviews on NBC’s Today Show, with Today co-host Meredith Vieira interviewing him; on MSNBC’s Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough; and an appearance later in the day on CNN. (On Morning Joe, former Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA) tells Trump, “Get off the birther stuff.”) Time magazine media critic James Poniewozik calls the Today interview “a trifecta of self-promotion for NBC Universal. It gave a platform to the star of Celebrity Apprentice, one of NBC’s few minor hits. It gave Today a buzzed-about interview… [a]nd it helped publicize an new NBC / Wall Street Journal poll that shows Trump tied for second as a hypothetical GOP presidential candidate.” Trump tells Vieira: “Three weeks ago when I started, I thought he was probably born in this country. Right now, I have some real doubts.… I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding.” Trump is combative with the somewhat acquiescent Vieira, saying he is increasingly suspicious that Obama has “conned the world” about his citizenship. Trump refuses to let Vieira refute his allegations; for example, when Vieira attempts to tell Trump about Hawaii’s policy on what birth documents it makes available (see July 1, 2009), Trump merely talks loudly over her. She lets him go unchallenged with a number of long-debunked assertions. For example, Trump asserts that Obama’s grandmother claimed to have seen Obama born in Kenya (see October 16, 2008 and After), saying: “His grandmother in Kenya said, ‘Oh no, he was born in Kenya and I was there and I witnessed the birth.’ Now, she’s on tape and I think that tape’s going to be produced fairly soon.… The grandmother in Kenya is on record saying he was born in Kenya.” Poniewozik says that claim is on a par with a recent fraudulent “birth certificate” from Kenya made available on the Internet (see August 1-4, 2009); so, Poniewozik writes, “now millions of Today viewers are invited to take it as fact.” Trump also claims to have sent his own investigators to Hawaii, who have supposedly unearthed startling evidence of Obama’s Kenyan citizenship (see April 7, 2011), but does not give any specifics. Poniewozik concludes that NBC News anchor Brian Williams is likely “mortified” by Trump’s NBC appearance, considering how Williams and NBC News have “thoroughly worked over the birther conspiracies” and found them groundless. [NBC News, 4/7/2011; Media Bistro, 4/7/2011; Time, 4/7/2011; St. Petersburg Times, 4/7/2011] Trump’s claim that Obama has spent “over $2 million” defending himself from challenges to his citizenship is quickly shown to be false (see April 7-10, 2011).

Billionaire Donald Trump, the host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice and a rumored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012, claims that President Obama has spent some $2 million defending himself against legal challenges to his US citizenship. In recent weeks, Trump has loudly proclaimed his conviction that Obama is not a US citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, and April 7, 2011). Trump is echoing claims made by former Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate who now appears regularly on Fox News. In a recent NBC interview, he claimed Obama “spent $2 million in legal fees trying to get away from this issue.” On CNN, he asked: “I just say very simply why doesn’t he show his birth certificate? Why has he spent over $2 million in legal fees to keep this quiet and to keep this silent?” On Fox, Palin repeats the figure and praises Trump’s efforts, saying that Trump is “paying for researchers to find out why President Obama would have to spend $2 million to not show his birth certificate. So more power to him.” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, attempts to secure information from Trump about the source of his $2 million figure, and gets no response. One source, PolitiFact determines, is the conservative news blog WorldNetDaily (WND), which claimed that Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings showed the Obama presidential campaign paid $1.7 million to the law firm of Perkins Coie since the election of November 2008. PolitiFact digs into the expenditures, as reported by law to the FEC by the Obama campaign organization Obama for America (OFA, later renamed Organizing for America). The figure of $1.7 million is accurate, PolitiFact determines, and adding expenditures between October 2008 and December 2010, the figure rises to some $2.6 million. However, the expenditures cover a variety of legal expenses, little of which went to birth certificate lawsuit issues. The FEC does not collect specific information on each payment, so it is impossible to tell how much, if any, has gone to Perkins Coie for court challenges to Obama’s citizenship. In a recent story in Roll Call, Democratic National Committee press secretary Hari Sevugan said, “[T]he campaign has incurred ordinary legal expenses related to the wind-down of its operations and other legal services, which all campaigns incur, and which are proportional to the unprecedented size of this campaign.” Some of the expenditures have gone to fight what Sevugan called “unmeritorious” lawsuits, including one that challenged Obama’s citizenship. And WND has reported that Perkins Coie lawyer Robert Bauer wrote one letter challenging a lawsuit filed by Gregory Hollister questioning Obama’s right to the presidency (see March 5, 2009). PolitiFact notes that most of the legal expenses paid by OFA “have nothing to do with the citizenship question.” Four campaign finance experts confirm that after any presidential election, a campaign’s law firm has plenty of work to do and such an expenditure by a campaign is not unusual. PolitiFact concludes: “It’s clear to us that the WND story has been twisted to wrongly assume that every dollar the Obama campaign spent on legal fees went to fight the release of Obama’s birth certificate. The evidence shows that’s simply not true. It’s a huge, unsubstantiated leap to assume that all, or most, of that was related to lawsuits about Obama’s citizenship. We rule Trump’s claim false.” [St. Petersburg Times, 4/7/2011]

Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii’s Department of Health who has personally reviewed President Obama’s original birth certificate and pronounced it valid (see October 30, 2008 and July 28, 2009), calls the “birther” controversy “ludicrous.” She again pronounces the certificate valid, and denounces “conspiracy theorists” in the so-called “birther” movement for continuing to spread bogus claims about the issue (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, Around June 28, 2010, March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 27-28, 2011, March 28, 2011, and April 5, 2011). “It’s kind of ludicrous at this point,” she tells an NBC interviewer. Fukino speaks in response to recent attempts by billionaire television host Donald Trump to revive the controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, and April 21, 2011). Trump has made statements on NBC and CNN saying that “nobody has any information” about Obama’s birth and “if he wasn’t born in this country, he shouldn’t be president of the United States.” Fukino says no matter who releases what, the “birthers” will continue to question Obama’s citizenship. “They’re going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated. The whole thing is silly.” Fukino again explains the difference between the “long form” birth certificate, the Hawaiian “record of live birth” kept in state government vaults according to state law, and the “short form” certificate which is issued per an individual’s or family request (see July 1, 2009). She has twice inspected the “long form” certificate and found it true and valid, once at the request of former Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), who in October 2008 asked Fukino if she could make a public statement in response to claims then circulating on the Internet that Obama was actually born in Kenya (see October 30, 2008). Fukino insisted on inspecting the form herself, in the company of the Hawaiian official in charge of state records, found the form valid, and stated such. “It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that,” Fukino says. She notes that her then-boss, Lingle, was a supporter of Obama’s challenger, John McCain (R-AZ), and would presumably have to be in on any cover up since Fukino made her public comment at the governor’s office’s request. “Why would a Republican governor—who was stumping for the other guy—hold out on a big secret?” she asks. She notes again that the “short form” “certification of live birth” that was obtained by the Obama campaign in 2007 and has since been publicly released (see June 13, 2008) is the standard document that anybody requesting their birth certificate from the state of Hawaii would receive from the Health Department. The “short form” was given to the Obama campaign at Obama’s request. “What he got, everybody got,” Fukino says. “He put out exactly what everybody gets when they ask for a birth certificate.” Other records, such as vital records in the Health Department’s Office of Health Status Monitoring, show that “Obama II, Barack Hussein” was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, further verifying Obama’s citizenship status. And two Honolulu newspapers announced the birth of a baby boy to Obama’s parents on that date (see July 2008). But Trump and others continue to insist that only the original “long form” record will prove Obama’s birth status. Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii attorney general’s office, says that Hawaiian state law precludes the release of “vital records” such as the “long form” birth certificate to anyone, even to the individual whose birth it records. “It’s a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody,” he says, nor can it be photocopied. Obama could visit the Health Department and inspect it, but could not take it or make copies. Obama requested and received the same “short form” birth certificate anyone would get upon making such a request, Wisch says. [MSNBC, 4/11/2011]

Anti-gay activist Linda Harvey writes a column for the conservative news blog WorldNetDaily mocking the upcoming “Day of Silence” that asks students across the country to protest what she calls “the alleged system-wide victimization of homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, intersexed, queer and questioning students, teachers, janitors, bus drivers, and school superintendents, based on heteronormativity and homophobia, stemming from outworn arguments and old attitudes, inevitably leading to bullying and violence.” The event is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and asks students to observe a day-long silence to bring attention to the problem of bullying that targets lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) citizens. The event has taken on new significance in the light of a spate of recent LGBT suicides, actions which Harvey has blamed on LGBT activists and not on bullying and homophobia. Harvey calls the Day of Silence a “dumb” “con job” that, she says, combines a “‘social justice’ nonsense” with “unfounded claims of ‘civil rights‘… knee-jerk anti-religious prejudice… teen rebellion… [and] disconnected stories of tragedy and heartbreak.” The overall end result is, she says, “a Hitler Youth product ready to do battle with anyone holding traditional moral values or even common sense.” She says that pro-gay activists such as GLSEN are working with “teachers’ unions and their leftist cronies” to “lobotomize” students. Claims that homosexuals are “born gay,” she says, are “pile[s] of manure,” and teachers, “leftists,” and pro-gay activists are working hard to inculcate this idea into impressionable young minds. Anyone who opposes “the homosexual agenda,” she writes, is labeled as a member of a “hate” group. She writes that the boys who participate in the Day of Silence will likely end up “dress[ing] like girls,” contract HIV/AIDS, and/or end up practicing “early sodomy.” In response to Harvey’s screed, an Equality Matters op-ed observes: “Harvey’s criticism of the Day of Silence reaffirms a disturbing observation about anti-gay conservatives: for right-wingers, there is no difference between acknowledging the problem of LGBT intolerance and indoctrinating children into the ‘gay lifestyle.’ The end-goal of anti-gay hate groups and people like Harvey is not solely an end of the Day of Silence; it is the total elimination of any recognition of the LGBT community in America’s schools.” [WorldNetDaily, 4/11/2011; Equality Matters, 4/11/2011]

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer uses a branding iron to ‘veto’ a number of tea party-sponsored bills passed by the Montana legislature. [Source: Montana Cowgirl (.com)]Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) vetoes seven Republican-passed bills, most sponsored by tea party-affiliated legislators. Schweitzer goes farther than merely signing his veto statements with a pen. He also indulges in what the local press calls “one of the most spectacular pieces of political theater in” his six-year history as governor, using a red-hot “VETO” branding iron on wooden plaques engraved with the bill’s Senate or House number. “These bills are either frivolous, unconstitutional, or in direct contradiction to the expressed will of the people of Montana,” he tells a cheering crowd and a throng of reporters and television cameras. Standing somewhat outside the crowd are a small number of the Republican legislators who ushered the bills through Montana’s legislature. Some of the bills, if signed, would have eliminated same-day voter registration, allowed open-pit gold and silver mining using the environmentally hostile “cyanide leach” process, given local sheriffs authority over the federal government in terror investigations, rewritten the definition of renewable resources, downgraded energy efficiency and code adoption requirements in building codes, gutted human-sexuality courses in Montana public schools, cut legal damages that can be sought in motor vehicle accidents, stopped the creation of a health insurance exchange, scaled back consumer protection laws, and repealed a citizen-passed medical marijuana law. Schweitzer promises to veto more bills soon, saying, “When I swore to uphold the Constitution I meant it.” [Great Falls Tribune, 4/13/2011; KTVQ-TV, 4/13/2011; Montana Cowgirl, 4/13/2011]

Arizona House Bill 2177, a bill requiring presidential candidates to prove they are natural-born citizens before being listed on Arizona state ballots, passes the Arizona State Senate, on a 20-8 party-line vote. The bill then passes the House on another party-line vote, 40-16. House Republican Carl Seel (R-AZ), who co-sponsored the bill, says the intent of the legislation is to “maintain the integrity of the Constitution.” A candidate wishing to run for president in Arizona would, under the legislation, have to submit a “long form birth certificate” that includes at least their date and place of birth, the names of the hospital and doctor, and, if applicable, signatures of any witnesses in attendance. Candidates who do not have such a document could submit other documents in its stead. The original bill required the long-form certificate to be presented, but after some tension between Republican state lawmakers, the long-form certificate was made optional, and other documents were inserted as certifying natural birth—including for Jewish citizens a circumcision certificate, a document given to Jewish parents after their male child is ceremonially circumsized. Such certificates are religious and not legal documents, but the bill would allow such a document to be used to prove citizenship. Other “acceptable” documents include hospital birth records, a postpartum medical record, or an early census record. Critics of the bill say it is driven by the “birther” controversy over whether President Obama is actually a US citizen (see June 27, 2008, July 20, 2008, and August 21, 2008). Billionaire Donald Trump, who says he may run for president as a Republican in 2012, has made frequent calls for Obama to reveal his birth certificate. Obama’s birth certificate has long been made publically available (see June 13, 2008), but “birthers” have consistently refused to accept its validity. State Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) voted against the bill and says it would have no standing in federal or state law even if signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ). “This is designed specifically to challenge [Obama’s] ability to run for re-election,” she says. “Frankly, I think they’d be better served by just surfacing a good candidate to run against him.” Critics note that such requirements as stated in the bill already exist under federal law, and Obama, as every presidential candidate has before him, submitted such documents during his filing to run for the White House. [Salon, 4/15/2008; State of Arizona House of Representatives, 2011; KTVK-TV, 4/13/2011; Phoenix New Times, 4/13/2011; Phoenix Business Journal, 4/13/2011] Many credit Trump with energizing the Republican legislators’ push to pass the bill. Trump recently met with Seel concerning the bill and his considered run for the presidency (see April 7, 2011). [Phoenix Business Journal, 4/13/2011] The Senate version of the bill included wording that some lawmakers said defined natural-born citizens as children whose parents were citizens at the time of the candidate’s birth, which would possibly conflict with constitutional statute. That wording was eliminated from the House version. [Arizona Republic, 3/23/2011] When the bill reaches Brewer’s desk four days later, she vetoes it (see April 19, 2011).

Glenn Beck, a Fox News talk show host who also hosts a syndicated radio show, tells radio listeners that he wishes the “birthers” would stop with the conspiracy theories. “Birthers” believe President Obama is not really a US citizen, despite all the evidence to the contrary (see June 13, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). Referring to his co-hosts, Beck says, “This is why Stu [Burguiere] hates, and I hate, and Pat [Gray] hates the birther thing.” Republicans who continue to flog the “birther” conspiracy theory, Beck says, are missing out on a real opportunity to “show real differences between the right and the left” in the upcoming presidential election. Beck tells his listeners: “If you’re going to lose your country—we’re going to lose it on a birth certificate? You have a real opportunity to talk about American exceptionalism and what made us exceptional. You have a real opportunity to talk about taxes and spending. Instead, you’re gonna waste time on the birth certificate? I understand. I personally think he’s a citizen. I think he was born here. I don’t think he was a Manchurian Candidate from birth. But, if you want to, great. You’re out of your mind if you think that is a winning argument for the next election.… Stop with the damn birth certificate! Stop!” [Mediaite (.com), 4/14/2011; The Blaze, 4/14/2011]

Goldie Taylor. [Source: Black News (.com)]Donald Trump, the billionaire entrepeneur, television show host, and rumored candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for president, denies charges of racism in his suggestions that President Obama is not a real American citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, and April 10, 2011). In the process, Trump says he has excellent relations with “the blacks.” Trump tells a New York radio interviewer: “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.” He bemoans the fact that Obama has such widespread support among African-American voters, calling polls that show 95 percent of African-Americans in New York approve of Obama “frightening” and saying of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), in reference to the 2008 Democratic primary: “Look at Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton did so much for the black population, so much and got very few votes.” He adds: “Look, I tell it like it is. Then you hear a political reporter go on and say, ‘It had nothing to do with race.’ But how come she got such a tiny piece of the vote? It’s a very sad thing.” [CNN, 4/14/2011; USA Today, 4/14/2011] The next day, Lee-Anne Goodman of the Toronto-based Canadian Press writes that Trump’s use of the term “the blacks” is “cringe-worthy,” and his characterization of poll results showing heavy African-American support for Obama as “frightening” is telling as to his apparent racial attitudes. American blacks have, until his recent embrace of “birtherism,” shown strong support for Trump. Since then, African-American journalists and pundits have criticized Trump. Corporate affairs executive Goldie Taylor, a former journalist, recently wrote: “As a people, we celebrated his business acumen; purchased his books and anything else with the Trump name we could get our hands on. Now among African-Americans, the once gilded Trump brand is about as worthless as a plug nickel. I’m not calling Trump a racist. But he ought to quit quacking before people start believing he’s a duck.” The day after Trump makes his remark about “the blacks,” the African-American online magazine The Root publishes a piece entitled “How Trump Lost the Black Vote,” which observes: “It’s 2011. It’s perfectly respectable to refer to African-Americans as ‘black people,’ ‘the black community,’ and maybe even ‘black folks’—if you can carry it off. But ‘the blacks?’ No.” Trump could have been “the one candidate in the 2012 Republican field to peel away a few black votes from Obama,” the article continues. “But once Trump started arguing that Obama wasn’t American, whatever good will he had in black world up and vanished.” [Canadian Press, 4/15/2011] An African-American blogger and Capitol Hill staffer who posts under the moniker “The Fed” is far more caustic towards Trump. He writes in reference to Trump’s comments about Clinton: “The Tea Party/birthers LOVE to say that their charge isn’t based in race, however, they consistently do sh_t like this! Now, their potential presidential candidate sees African-Americans as some foreign object incapable of independent thought. In one interview, Trump marginalized not only the Obama administration, but the entire black population. Clearly Trump is playing to the gutter community; spreading lies, pushing conspiracy theories and now racism. The truth is, if Obama lacked his charisma, intelligence, and competence, his ‘blackness’ wouldn’t have been supported by ‘The Blacks.’ Don’t believe me? Ask Alan Key[e]s, Al Sharpton, Cynthia McKinney, Jesse Jackson, or another number of black candidates, how important other qualities are, besides being black. Considering the fact that over the past 222 years, this country has never had an African-American candidate within a rock’s throw of the Oval Office, minimizing any degree of the pride felt in an historic opportunity as nothing more than race based shows how culturally out of touch Trump is with ‘The Blacks.’ If I didn’t know any better, I would think this was Trump’s attempt to say something better than ‘The N_ggers.’ He wanted to speak about the African-American community, but didn’t want the audience to think ‘The Blacks’ were equal to them. He had to maintain the ‘us’ and ‘them’ separation. Instead of humanizing African Americans, he attempted to objectify the entire race to remove common sense from our vote.” [Urban Politico, 4/14/2011]

The altered photograph sent out by California ‘tea party’ activist Marilyn Davenport. She claims the depiction is not racist. [Source: Orange County Weekly]Marilyn Davenport, a member of the Orange County (California) Republican Party (OCGOP) and a prominent tea party activist, sends an email to “a few friends” depicting President Obama as a half-ape “child” sitting on the laps of chimpanzee parents. The photograph is headed by the words, “Now you know why no birth certificate” (see June 13, 2008). Davenport attempts to laugh off the email as a joke, telling a reporter: “Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black. Besides, I only sent it to a few people—mostly people I didn’t think would be upset by it.” Other local Republicans are less amused. One of her fellow OCGOP members, who refuses to be identified, says: “It’s unbelievable. It’s much more racist than the watermelon email. I can’t believe it was sent out. I’m not an Obama fan but how stupid do you have to be to do this?” The member is referring to a February 2009 email sent out by another Orange County Republican, then-Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose, who emailed a picture of a watermelon patch in front of the White House and then denied the picture was racist (see February 24-26, 2009). Another Republican official who also refuses to be identified says that Davenport is “a really, really sweet old lady so I am surprised to hear about this.” In a telephone conversation, OCGOP chairman Scott Baugh tells Davenport the email is tasteless. When contacted by a reporter from the Orange County Weekly, Davenport asks: “You’re not going to make a big deal about this are you? It’s just an Internet joke.” Baugh tells a reporter that it is indeed a big deal. “When I saw that email today I thought it was despicable,” he says. “It is dripping with racism and it does not promote the type of message Orange County Republicans want to deliver to the public. I think she should consider stepping down as an elected official.” Michael J. Schroeder, an Orange County resident and former California Republican Party chairman, calls the email disgusting. “This is a three strikes situation for Marilyn Davenport,” Schroeder says. Schroeder cites Davenport’s impassioned defense of a former Newport Beach city councilman who made explicitly racist slurs against “Mexicans,” and her defense of Grose and the watermelon picture. “Now, she has managed to top both of those incidents by comparing African-Americans to monkeys. She has disgraced herself and needs to resign. If she doesn’t, the Republican Party must remove her.” Davenport responds by sending an angry email to fellow California conservative activists demanding to know the identity of “the coward” who supplied a copy of her email to the press. She refuses to speak to at least two reporters, blaming the “liberal media” for the controversy. She later sends another email to fellow Orange County Republican elected officials, apologizing if anyone was offended and again blaming the “liberal media” for reporting the story. She writes: “I’m sorry if my email offended anyone. I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth. In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race. We all know a double standard applies regarding this president. I received plenty of emails about George Bush that I didn’t particularly like yet there was no ‘cry’ in the media about them. One only has to go to Youtube or Google Images to see a plethora of lampooning videos and pictures of Obama, Bush, and other politicians. That being said, I will NOT resign my central committee position over this matter that the average person knows and agrees is much to do about nothing. Again, for those select few who might be truly offended by viewing a copy of an email I sent to a select list of friends and acquaintances, unlike the liberal left when they do the same, I offer my sincere apologies to you—the email was not meant for you. For any of my friends or acquaintances who were the recipients of my email and were truly offended, please call me so I may offer a sincere verbal apology to you.” Orange County Republican activist Tim Whitacre defends Davenport, telling a reporter: “Marilyn Davenport is a staunch, ethical Republican lady. There is nothing unethical about this from a party standpoint because it wasn’t sent out to the party at large with any racist statements and it wasn’t signed as a central committee member. As a private individual, she is just real big on birther stuff. One of her passions that drives her is the president’s lack of forthrightness about where he was born. Marilyn believes that nobody knows where he was born and so this picture says a thousand words. She is not a perfect lady, but she is no racist. She is a gentle person who would feed you, help you, be there for you if you were in trouble. She is known as a pleasant, loving person and it kills me that she is being attacked by this non-story knowing her mindset.” [Orange County Weekly, 4/15/2011; KCAL-TV, 4/15/2011; CBS Los Angeles, 4/15/2011] Baugh says that he wants an ethics investigation into Davenport’s actions. [Associated Press, 4/15/2011] Conservative blogger Charles Johnson calls Davenport’s message “a vicious racist email about the first African-American president,” and writes, “This latest sickening example makes the connection between birtherism and old-school racism utterly explicit.” [Charles Johnson, 4/15/2011]

Bruce Caswell. [Source: Hillsdale County GOP]Michigan State Senator Bruce Caswell (R-Hillsdale) suggests legislation that would force foster children to use their state-funded clothing allowance only in thrift stores. Caswell says that foster children should get “gift cards” to be used only at Salvation Army, Goodwill, or other thrift stores. He explains: “I never had anything new. I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was—and quite frankly it’s true—once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.” Gilda Jacobs of the Michigan League for Human Services says, “Honestly, I was flabbergasted” to hear of Caswell’s proposal. “I really couldn’t believe this. Because I think, gosh, is this where we’ve gone in this state? I think that there’s the whole issue of dignity. You’re saying to somebody, you don’t deserve to go in and buy a new pair of gym shoes. You know, for a lot of foster kids, they already have so much stacked against them.” Caswell initially admits his proposal would not save Michigan any money, but later says that the proposal would save money. He insists he has no interest in stigmatizing foster children. [Hillsdale County GOP, 2011; Michigan Radio 91.7 FM, 4/15/2011; Michigan Messenger, 4/22/2011] Jessica Pieklo of the humanitarian organization Care2 writes that the proposal is another example of what she calls “the single-focused attack on the poor and politically powerless” being carried out by Michigan’s Republican leadership. “Reasonable checks and transparency in the administration of public benefits is one thing, but Caswell’s proposal is hardly that. It is a pronouncement on the value of these kids, poor and almost homeless usually through no fault their own.” [Care2 (.org), 4/24/2011] In a post on Twitter, MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow says: “This is cartoon evil, right? This can’t be real. This cannot be a real thing. Gotta be performance art.” [Talksy, 4/24/2011]

White nationalist lawyer and A3P leader William Johnson at San Juan Capistrano tea party rally. [Source: Media Matters]A coalition of local tea party and white supremacist organizations hold a joint rally in San Juan Capistrano, California. The rally is scheduled to coincide with over 100 other tea party rallies around the country scheduled for the same day. This rally is organized by an organization called American Third Position (A3P), a white nationalist political party founded by racist white “skinheads” (see October 15, 2009 and After), and promoted on the website of TeaParty.org, also called the 1776 Tea Party, a large and well-established tea party umbrella group. At the rally, white nationalist lawyer William Johnson, an A3P founder, complains of the media attention he had drawn with his recent failed attempt to land a judgeship in California. “Ron Paul endorsed me for Superior Court judge, and I was on my way,” Johnson tells the crowd. “No sooner than I’d put my hat in the ring than… it came out that Johnson is a white nationalist, that Johnson wants to create a separate white ethno-state, that Johnson supports the 14 words of David Lane [a member of the defunct violent white power group The Order who died serving a jail term for murdering a Jewish radio host—see June 18, 1984 and After and May 1992], that ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,’ and the media went wild with all of that, and Ron Paul withdrew his endorsement of me… because he did not believe in a separate white ethno-state and he didn’t know that I did.” Johnson is followed by Holocaust denier Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review, who avoids overt anti-Semitism in his remarks. David Holthouse of the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters will write, “Although it would be unfair to characterize the tea party movement on the whole as white nationalist, it’s clear that large gatherings of angry, conservative, predominately white Americans are viewed with relish by groups like A3P.” A3P Pennsylvania chairman Steve Smith says after the rally: “The tea parties are fertile ground for our activists. Tea party supporters and the A3P share much common ground with regard to our political agendas.” Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler will tell Holthouse that white supremacist groups such as A3P are not welcome at his organization’s events, but the organization can do little to stop their involvement, saying, “As a national umbrella organization with over 3,500 chapters, we obviously don’t have folks from the national organization at every rally to monitor literature distribution.” Meckler will say he knew nothing of A3P’s involvement in the April 16 rally or others it took part in until Holthouse contacted him, and will say: “We would absolutely ban any white nationalist group from our organization if we found them to be trying to get involved. We have a 100 percent zero tolerance policy towards this type of group. This type of activity has no place in the legitimate tea party movement. They [A3P] are hiding behind a tea party banner. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’ll be on the lookout.” Holthouse notes that tea party organizations have been sensitive to accusations of racism in their ranks since July 2010, when the NAACP asked tea partiers to “purge” racists from their ranks. The NAACP’s request was met with scorn and opprobrium from tea party members, and A3P has continued to take part in tea party rallies since that time, apparently without opposition (see October 10, 2010). At the April 16 rally, the A3P table is next to a table hosted by the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist, segregationist organization. [Media Matters, 2011; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2011]

Marilyn Davenport. [Source: Angry Black Lady (.com)]Marilyn Davenport, the Orange County, California, Republican Party official and tea party activist who sent out an email of President Obama and his parents as chimpanzees (see April 15, 2011), apologizes for her error, calling herself an “imperfect Christian,” and says she sees no reason to resign her post as a member of the county GOP’s central committee. She reads a statement to reporters that includes a Bible passage from the Book of James. The statement reads in part: “To my fellow Americans who have seen the email that I forwarded and were offended by my actions, I humbly apologize. I ask for your forgiveness for my unwise behavior. I didn’t stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive. I’m an imperfect Christian gal who does her best to live a Godly life. I would never do anything to intentionally harm or berate others regardless of ethnicity. Everyone who knows me, knows that to be true. I will not repeat this error. So I ask for your forgiveness, for I am truly sorry.” Asked by reporters who she believes she offended, she says: “I assume I have offended the black people. Having friends who are black, I never intended for that.” The Orange County Republican Central Committee is slated to meet to discuss the issue. Committee member Tim Whitacre says Davenport will not attend, because she has received death threats. Whitacre says, “She’s horrified this has happened and she’s horrified anyone would be offended by this.” Whitacre says that since Davenport has apologized, it is time for people to move on without further comment. “It was a private email from her private house to some private friends,” Whitacre says. “I am not defending the email. No one is defending the content of the email. What I am defending, I know this lady’s mindset and her heart. I know there’s nothing in her history that would say racist.” Republican Party of Orange County chairman Scott Baugh says that the committee can pass a resolution critical of Davenport, and that is about all it can do. “The bottom line is state law precludes the committee from terminating her membership,” Baugh says. “She’s an elected member, elected by the public, and there are very narrow reasons you can remove her, and her racist email is not one of them.” Civil rights leader Earl Ofari Hutchinson says Davenport should resign. “The request by Orange County GOP chair Scott Baugh for Davenport’s resignation and pending investigation is not enough,” he says in an email to a Los Angeles NBC station. “The Reverend Al Sharpton has also demanded Davenport’s resignation.… We must send the message that racism will not be tolerated. Racism will be condemned anytime by anybody.” Hutchinson says the Republican National Committee should formally censure Davenport for her email “of a racist, inflammatory, and despicable photo depicting President Obama and his family as monkeys,” and should urge the Orange County GOP to issue an apology to Obama. “Anything less than censure and an apology reinforces the notion that the national GOP tacitly condones racist words and acts by its officials,” Hutchinson says. [KABC-TV, 4/18/2011; NBC Los Angeles, 4/20/2011] Alice Huffman, president of the NAACP’s California State Conference, says: “There are no ifs and buts about this cartoon; it is absolutely and positively racist in nature. There is no way that depicting the president of the United States as less than human can be considered anything but a racist act.” Former GOP state chairman Michael J. Schroeder says, “The damage to the Republican Party has been by her, and I still think she should resign.” [The Root, 4/20/2011] In an interview, Davenport says she worries she has lost her reputation. “I understand why everyone is contacting me,” she says. “I wasn’t wise in sending the email out. I shouldn’t have done it. I really wasn’t thinking when I did it. I had poor judgment.… Everybody who knows me says they can’t believe people are calling me a racist.” Davenport says that she received the doctored photo of a chimpanzee Obama from a tea party activist, and that the photo is based on the media frenzy prompted by Donald Trump’s claims that Obama might have been born in Africa and therefore is not a US citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, and April 14-15, 2011). [Orange County Weekly, 4/18/2011]

Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ) vetoes a controversial “birther bill” that would require presidential candidates to submit proof of citizenship to the Arizona secretary of state. The bill passed both houses of the Arizona legislature on party-line votes (see April 13-15, 2011). Brewer also vetoes another Republican-backed bill that would have allowed citizens to bring guns onto college campuses. The “birther” bill would have required such documents as the so-called “long form” birth certificate (see July 1, 2009) and/or other acceptable forms of proof of US citizenship, including for Jewish candidates a proof of circumcision. “I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for president of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth to submit their ‘early baptism or circumcision certificates,’” Brewer says. “This is a bridge too far. This measure creates significant new problems while failing to do anything constructive for Arizona.” Brewer, a former Arizona secretary of state, says she does not support designating one person as “gatekeeper to the ballot for a candidate,” as it “could lead to arbitrary or politically motivated decisions.” Many believe the “birther” bill is an attempt to join in the “birther” controversy that has called into question President Obama’s citizenship. Billionaire television host and entrepeneur Donald Trump (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, and April 21, 2011) recently met with the bill’s House sponsor, Representative Carl Seel (R-AZ), and area tea party organizers to discuss the bill and other political items of interest (see April 7, 2011). Many believe that Trump’s interest in the “birther” controversy helped usher the bill through the Arizona legislature. Arizona Senator Steve Gallardo (D-AZ) says Brewer vetoed the bills because they damaged Arizona’s image. “All they do is put us in the national spotlight and make us look silly,” Gallardo says. “She’s saying she doesn’t want that to happen any longer.… At the end of the day, it was the right thing for Arizona.” However, State Senator Steve Smith (R-AZ) says the bill would have settled questions about Obama’s citizenship. [KSAZ-TV, 4/18/2011; Arizona Republic, 4/18/2011; Reuters, 4/19/2011] Bills similar to the “birther” legislation have been defeated in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maine, and Montana. [KSAZ-TV, 4/18/2011] It is possible that the Arizona House can override Brewer’s veto, but observers, including House Speaker Kirk Adams (R-AZ) believe that will not happen. Seel says such an attempt would appear to be an attempt to override Brewer’s judgment. “Overrides are a real difficult monster,” he says. [Arizona Republic, 4/18/2011]

George Stephanopoulos interviews Michele Bachmann on ABC. [Source: Washington Times]US Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) tells ABC morning talk show host George Stephanopoulos that she is “mov[ing] on” from the so-called “birther” controversy surrounding President Obama’s supposed lack of US citizenship. In an interview, Stephanopoulos asks Bachmann about comments she made the night before on Fox News advising Obama to publicly display his birth certificate to settle the matter. Stephanopolous notes that Kent Sorenson (R-IA), an Iowa state senator who is expected to serve as Bachmann’s political director for her 2012 presidential bid, has introduced legislation in the Iowa Senate that could force candidates to file “a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate certified by the appropriate official in the candidate’s state of birth” (see March 6, 2011). Bachmann tells Stephanopoulos that only county clerks can assert a valid proof of birth, and acknowledges that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ) vetoed a similar bill in her state (see April 19, 2011). Stephanopoulos then shows Bachmann a copy of Obama’s birth certificate (see June 13, 2008), which the Obama presidential campaign released in 2008, and informs her that Hawaiian state officials have validated the certificate as legal and binding (see October 30, 2008 and July 28, 2009). “I have the president’s certificate right here,” he tells Bachmann. “It’s certified, it’s got a certification number. It’s got the registrar of the state signed. It’s got a seal on it. And it says ‘this copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.’” Bachmann responds, “Well, then that should settle it.” Stephanopoulos asks, “So it’s over?” Bachmann replies: “That’s what should settle it. I take the president at his word and I think—again I would have no problem and apparently the president wouldn’t either. Introduce that, we’re done. Move on.” Stephanopoulos presses the issue, saying: “Well, this has been introduced. So this story is over?” Bachmann replies: “Well, as long as someone introduces it I guess it’s over.… That is not the main issue facing the United States right now.” [Politico, 4/20/2011; ABC News, 4/20/2011] Bachmann has launched a number of attacks on Obama in the past, challenging his patriotism (see October 17-22, 2008), asserting that he and his administration are “socialists” (see March 5, 2009, August 18, 2009, and November 5, 2009), warning that he plans to build “re-education camps” to indoctrinate America’s children (see March 31, 2009), saying that he and his fellow Democrats plan to force public schools to host “sex clinics” (see September 30, 2009), and attempting to block a resolution commemorating Hawaii’s statehood because of her apparent concern that the resolution would validate Obama’s birth in that state (see July 27, 2009).

Jerry Seinfeld. [Source: Contactmusic (.com)]Comedian Jerry Seinfeld withdraws from a scheduled appearance at a benefit for Donald Trump’s Eric Trump Foundation because the billionaire entrepeneur and television host has been questioning whether President Obama is a US citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, April 14-15, 2011, and April 21, 2011). The event is scheduled for September 13. Seinfeld agreed to do the benefit in January 2011, but according to his manager, he has become “increasingly uncomfortable” with Trump’s questioning of Obama’s citizenship. The manager says that Seinfeld “feels this kind of demagoguery has no place in public discourse.… He has respectfully withdrawn from the event, and is making a contribution both to the Eric Trump Foundation” and to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, another beneficiary of the event. Trump answers with a letter castigating Seinfeld’s decision, writing: “I just learned you canceled a show for my son’s charity, the Eric Trump Foundation, which benefits the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital (children with cancer) because of the fact that you think I am being very aggressive with respect to President Obama, who is doing an absolutely terrible job as our leader—just look at Libya, our economy, gas, food, and clothing prices and maybe you will understand what is going on!… [T]he children of St. Jude are very disappointed” in Seinfeld’s decision, he continues. “What I do feel badly about is that I agreed to do, and did, your failed show, The Marriage Ref, even though I thought it was absolutely terrible. Despite its poor ratings, I didn’t cancel on you like you canceled on my son and St. Jude. I only wish I did.” Yahoo! television news reporter Tara Ariano calls Trump’s letter “angry and bitter.” [CNN, 4/21/2011; Yahoo! News, 4/21/2011]

Billionaire Donald Trump, the host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice and a rumored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012, tells a CNN interviewer to “stop asking me about a birth certificate,” referring to his relentless assault on President Obama’s alleged lack of US citizenship (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, and April 14-15, 2011). In a recent CNN interview, Trump said he “does not like” talking about Obama’s birth certificate (see April 10, 2011). “You have to stop asking me about a birth certificate,” he says. “You’ve got to stop asking the questions. The problem is every time I go on a show—like as an example, this morning—the first question you asked me is about the birth certificate. I think my strength is jobs, the economy, and protecting our nation from OPEC, China, and the other countries that are ripping us off.” In earlier interviews, Trump has said he is “proud” to discuss the “birther” allegations. Interviewer Ali Velshi calls the birther claims “ludicrous,” and when Trump tells him to stop asking about the birth certificate, Velshi responds: “We’ll stop asking you the questions when you stop saying that President Obama can’t prove he is born in the United States. Is that a deal?” [Politico, 4/21/2011]

The New York Times publishes the results of a recent poll it conducted in conjunction with CBS News. The poll finds a general “lack of passion” among Republican voters for any particular 2012 presidential contender. However, one of the poll’s findings is buried deep in the story: Forty-seven percent of Republican voters believe that President Obama was born in another country (therefore making him not a US citizen and ineligible for the presidency). Twenty-two percent say they do not know where he was born, and 32 percent say he was born in the United States (see June 13, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). Within hours, the section about Republicans doubting Obama’s birthplace is removed from the online version of the Times article with no explanation. [New York Times, 4/22/2011; Media Matters, 4/22/2011; Crooks and Liars, 4/23/2011]

The non-profit whistleblower group WikiLeaks releases documents that may inadvertently speed up the timing of the US effort to raid Osama bin Laden’s hideout. WikiLeaks releases secret military dossiers on about 750 prisoners held at the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba (see April 24, 2011). These documents cover nearly every prisoner held at Guantanamo since the prison opened there in 2002. All the dossiers are published in full and are easily accessible on well known websites, including those of the New York Times, The Guardian, and WikiLeaks. [Guardian, 4/25/2011]Mentions of Ahmed - Numerous dossiers mention “Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti,” or some variant on that name. This will later be revealed as a commonly used alias for Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, a trusted courier for bin Laden. In the dossiers, Ahmed is seen as an important al-Qaeda figure and a courier for important al-Qaeda leaders. [Express Tribune, 5/4/2011]Mentions of Abbottabad - Even more crucially, the dossiers reveal al-Qaeda activity in Abbottabad, the Pakistan town where bin Laden is hiding at this time. For instance, the dossier on al-Qaeda leader Abu Faraj al-Libbi states: “In July 2003, al-Libbi received a letter from Osama bin Laden’s designated courier, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan, requesting detainee take on the responsibility of collecting donations, organizing travel, and distributing funds to families in Pakistan.… In mid-2003, al-Libbi moved his family to Abbottabad, and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar.” [Daily Mail, 5/3/2011]Data in the Dossiers Lead to Bin Laden - In fact, the courier mentioned as “Jan” appears to be Ahmed. “Jan” was a name al-Libbi made up in his interrogations in order to protect Ahmed. US intelligence had figured this out by late 2005. US analysts were able to use information on Ahmed from the interrogation of al-Libbi and other Guantanamo prisoners to find the exact location of bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout in 2010 (see August-September 2010). Bin Laden will be killed by a US Special Forces raid on his hideout on May 2, 2011, eight days after the dossiers are made public (see May 2, 2011). Influence on Raid Timing or Not? - The Daily Mail will later suggest: “WikiLeaks may have triggered the killing of Osama bin Laden.… [S]pecial Forces stormed his fortress only days after the website published new secret documents.” [Daily Mail, 5/3/2011] Time magazine will say that according to an aide to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), “Though there may have been a reference to the compound in one of WikiLeaks’ classified document dumps, there wasn’t a serious concern that the information had become widely known through that source.” [Time, 5/3/2011] Plans for the raid were already well developed before the Wikileaks release (see for instance March 14, 2011). President Obama gives the final okay for the raid on April 29, four days after the release (see April 29, 2011).

Appearing on ABC’s Sunday morning talk show This Week, in an interview taped ahead of time but broadcast on Easter morning, Christian evangelist Franklin Graham gives his blessing to billionaire presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rumored presidential aspirations, saying: “When I first saw that he was getting in, I thought, ‘Well, this has got to be a joke.’ But the more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself: ‘You know? Maybe the guy’s right.’” Graham says he agrees with Trump’s allegations that President Obama may not be an American citizen. The Charlotte Observer notes, “There was no discussion of how Graham, a conservative Christian, could support a thrice-married owner of gambling casinos.” Graham has said in recent years that Obama was “born a Muslim” and Islam is a “wicked” religion. On This Week, he questions Obama’s Christianity (see January 6-11, 2008) and refuses to say that Obama’s birth certificate is valid (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). “The president… has some issues to deal with here,” he says. “He can solve this whole birth certificate issue pretty quickly (see July 1, 2009). I was born in a hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, and I know that my records are there. You can probably even go and find out what room my mother was in when I was born. I don’t know why he can’t produce that.… It’s an issue that looks like he could answer pretty quickly.” In a subsequent interview for Christianity Today, Graham backs away from his previous claims that Obama is a Muslim, saying: “I do not believe for an instant that Obama is a Muslim. He has said he’s not a Muslim. I take him at his word. People say he’s not born in the United States. I take it on the word that they properly vetted him before they swore him into office. I’m sure somebody had to look at his credentials. I’m not saying the president is a Muslim, never said he’s a Muslim. He says he’s a Christian.… I’ve never said that Obama was born a Muslim.” However, he notes, “All throughout the Muslim world, every person whose father is a Muslim is recognized under Islamic law as a Muslim.” Obama’s father was a nonpracticing Muslim. [Charlotte Observer, 4/25/2011; Christianity Today, 4/26/2011] The Charlotte Observer publishes an op-ed in response to Graham’s claims that accuses him of “spouting… nonsense” about Obama’s birth certificate and “join[ing] Trump in fostering the bizarre and false birther allegations.” [Charlotte Observer, 4/26/2011] In 2010, Graham told a CNN reporter that Obama’s “problem” was that he was “born a Muslim” (see August 19, 2010).

Responding to recent comments by evangelist Franklin Graham that questioned President Obama’s US citizenship (see April 24-25, 2011), Fox News anchor Shepard Smith tells his viewers: “Fox News can confirm that the president of the United States is a citizen of the United States. Period.” Smith refers viewers to the validated copy of Obama’s birth certificate that has been available for years (see June 13, 2008) before making the assertion that Fox confirms Obama’s US citizenship. [Media Matters, 4/25/2011; Business Insider, 4/26/2011]

Billionaire television host Donald Trump says that “somebody” informed him that President Obama’s birth certificate is “missing.” During his April 7 interview on NBC’s Today Show, Trump told interviewer Meredith Vieira that he had sent a team of researchers to Hawaii to investigate President Obama’s birth status (see April 7, 2011 and April 7, 2011). “[T]hey cannot believe what they are finding,” he told her. In later interviews, Trump was coy about revealing what, if anything, his investigators have found, telling one reporter, “I’ll let you know that at a future date” and another, “[T]hat’s none of your business.” In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Cooper presses Trump to divulge what his investigators have actually unearthed. Trump claims that he has learned Obama’s birth certificate is “not there and it doesn’t exist.” He says: “Well, I’ve been told very recently, Anderson, that the birth certificate is missing. I’ve been told that it’s not there and it doesn’t exist. And if that’s the case, that’s a big problem.” Cooper asks, “Who told you that?” and Trump answers, “I just heard that two days ago from somebody.” Cooper asks, “From your investigators?” and Trump replies: “I don’t want to say who. But I’ve been told that the birth certificate is not there, it’s missing.” Cooper presses Trump, asking, “Can you name even one person who your investigators have talked to?” Trump refuses, saying: “I don’t want to do that right now. It’s not appropriate right now.” CNN researchers working for Cooper’s broadcast have contacted Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former Hawaii Department of Health director and a Republican, who has repeatedly validated the authenticity of Obama’s original birth certificate (see October 30, 2008, July 28, 2009, and April 11, 2011). She calls Obama’s certificate “absolutely authentic,” and debunks Trump’s suggestion that Obama wants to keep the certificate hidden to cloak his status as a Muslim, because, Fukino says, no birth certificate from that time mentions faith. CNN finds three people who remember Obama as an infant in Honolulu, including Governor Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Obama’s mother’s college advisor, and another mother who gave birth at the same time Obama was born. The other mother says she remembers Obama in the hospital because “in those days, there were hardly any other black babies.” Reportedly, the exchange between Trump and Cooper becomes heated at times. [New York Magazine, 4/7/2011; Fox Nation, 4/19/2011; Think Progress, 4/26/2011; CNN, 4/26/2011]

The Bible Nation Society logo. [Source: Bible Nation Society / Vimeo (.com)]A group that successfully pushed for a House resolution commemmorating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible is revealed to be led by a pastor who claims President Obama may be the Antichrist. House Representatives Robert Aderholt (R-AL) and Nick Rahall (D-WV) introduced a resolution expressing the House’s “gratitude” for the “influence” the King James Bible (KJV) has had on “countless families, individuals, and institutions in the United States.” The two were lobbied by the small, non-profit Bible Nation Society (BNS) of Corunna, Michigan. The BNS is led by Douglas Levesque, the pastor of Corunna’s Immanuel Baptist Church. At the organization’s 2010 Bible in Culture Conference, Levesque preached on the “Antichrist Quotient,” in which he laid out a detailed theory that stated Obama might be the Antichrist. Levesque told conference members that “God has given us a purposeful ambiguity around” the Antichrist, then proceeded to offer what he apparently believes is evidence that Obama might be the Antichrist, or is at least anti-Christian. Levesque accused Obama of “twist[ing] the word of God” and said, “the Antichrist Quotient goes up above and beyond for someone who would so blatantly attack the word of God.” He added, “This man offends me, this man offends my God.” Levesque offered a number of parallels to material from the Book of Revelation: Obama’s motorcade vehicle is jokingly nicknamed “The Beast,” the name Barack “means thunder and lightning,” and the name of Obama’s then-chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, means “lightning, God with us.” Levesque concluded: “Why doesn’t Obama answer the questions about his citizenship? Why doesn’t he answer questions about his faith? Why doesn’t he answer the questions about his bisexuality, his homosexuality, his drug use?… Because he has a mouth speaking great lying things.” Neither Aderholt nor Rahall have said if they publicly support, or repudiate, Levesque’s statements. [Religion Dispatches (.org), 4/26/2011]

Billionaire Donald Trump, the host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice and a rumored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012, makes the allegation that President Obama was a “terrible” college student who may have been admitted to the Ivy League universities of Columbia and Harvard because of his race. Trump offers no proof of the claim; it was first advanced in 2008 in a Wall Street Journal editorial that implied Obama was a “mediocre” student and demanded to see a college thesis that does not exist (see September 11, 2008). In 2009, author Jerome Corsi advanced the groundless claim that Obama was “placed” in Harvard Law School through the auspices of an African-American Muslim radical and a Saudi prince (see July 21, 2009). “I heard he was a terrible student, terrible,” Trump says. “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.” Obama, like most politicians, has declined to release his college transcripts. Obama graduated from Columbia and then from Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Trump says Obama’s refusal to release his college transcripts is part of a pattern of concealing information about himself. “I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can’t get into Harvard,” Trump says. “We don’t know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.” Trump takes credit for “reinvigorat[ing]” the birther controversy, and boasts, “[T]he last guy [Obama] wants to run against is Donald Trump.” In his turn, Trump refuses to disclose his net worth. [NBC New York, 4/26/2011] Conservative pundit Pat Buchanan agrees, claiming on MSNBC’s Hardball that Obama only got into Harvard Law School because of “affirmative action.” Buchanan has made claims of blacks and Hispanics receiving “special treatment” because of “affirmative action” many times in the past (see May 28, 2009, May 31, 2009, June 12, 2009, June 20, 2009, July 16, 2009, and October 13, 2009). “I think the way was very probably greased, and I think he’s probably affirmative action all the way,” Buchanan says, and adds: “[L]ook… you know how the system works. You apply. He’s an African-American kid at a time where everybody’s saying: ‘Let’s bring those guys in. Give ‘em an advantage, move ‘em ahead.’” [Media Matters, 4/26/2011] Liberal pundit Keith Olbermann, writing on his personal blog, ridicules Trump’s demand to see Obama’s college transcripts, writing: “If that doesn’t work, it’ll be his list of movie rentals back in the days of VHS, or his Chicago White Sox ticket stubs to prove he really is a fan, or his laundry delivery records to make sure William Ayers or Jeremiah Wright or Karl Marx hasn’t been slipping him notes inside the suit pockets like they did in that John LeCarre spy novel.… Translated to this sorry chapter of sorry American politics, that means the Radical Right will keep the conspiracy theory going and simply change the focus.… [T]he debate has never been about whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. The debate has been about whether the Republicans could or can do by rumor, innuendo, and Fox propaganda, what they cannot do by the ballot: find the overarching ‘scandal’ with which to beat a Democratic president.” [Keith Olbermann, 4/27/2011]

Michelle Goldberg. [Source: Guardian]Author and journalist Michelle Goldberg examines the racial prejudice behind Donald Trump’s recent spate of attacks on President Obama’s citizenship and integrity (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, April 14-15, 2011, and April 21, 2011). Trump has recently alleged that Obama was a “terrible student” in college who would not have made it into Ivy League universities such as Columbia and Harvard without some sort of racial bias (see April 26, 2011). Goldberg says Trump is mining the “fever swamps” of the far-right conspiratists for his allegations. Goldberg tracks claims about Obama’s educational history back to a 2008 editorial in the Wall Street Journal that challenged Obama to release his college transcripts to prove that he was not a “mediocre student who benefited from racial preference” (see September 11, 2008). The Journal overlooked the fact that Obama made the Harvard Law Review and graduated with honors from that university’s law school. In recent years, “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz, who has introduced forgeries of Kenyan “birth certificates” into evidence in court as “proof” that Obama is not a US citizen (see August 1-4, 2009), has issued a number of allegations about Obama’s college years. Currently she claims he must have been a foreign exchange student in order to get into Columbia University, saying: “That might be one of the reasons why his records are not unsealed. If his records show he got into Columbia University as a foreign exchange student, then we have a serious issue with his citizenship.” She also disputes Columbia’s records of Obama’s graduation from that university, saying that Obama left school after nine months, and offers as proof a document from the National Student Clearinghouse that lists Obama’s dates of attendance as September 1982 to May 1983. However, Kathleen Dugan of the National Student Clearinghouse says Taitz’s search inputs were incorrect, and thusly yielded incorrect data. Taitz also continues to promote the debunked theory that Obama’s 1983 visit to Pakistan proves he is not a citizen (see Around June 28, 2010), and speculates that he visited Pakistan, not for a month or so, “but a year and a half.” Taitz ties the disparate threads of her conspiracy—Obama the poor student benefiting from racial bias, Obama the foreign national, Obama the closet Muslim—into a single theory: she claims that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal engineered Obama’s acceptance into Harvard Law School, paid his way through school, and worked behind the scenes to get Obama the position of editor of the Law Review. The Saudi prince was introduced to Obama by African-American Muslim radical activist Khalid Al-Mansour, Taitz says (see July 21, 2009). She confirms that she has been in contact with Trump and has forwarded all of her information to him. Goldberg writes: “It’s easy enough to see why this particular narrative has endured. Not only does it position the president as a Muslim Manchurian candidate with longtime ties to agents of the caliphate, but it also assures resentful whites that this seemingly brilliant black man isn’t so smart after all. In that sense, it’s of a piece with the right-wing obsession with Obama’s use of a teleprompter, and with the widespread suspicion that he didn’t really write the eloquent Dreams From My Father, a claim Trump recently made at a Tea Party rally. Obama, in this view, is both sinister and stupid, canny enough to perpetrate one of the biggest frauds in American history but still the ultimate affirmative-action baby. Trump is clearly not as intelligent as Obama, but he’s not an idiot, either. When he blows this particular dog whistle, he knows exactly what the Republican base is hearing.” [Daily Beast, 4/26/2011]

On Sean Hannity’s Fox News talk show, guest Tamara Holder, a Fox legal analyst, speculates why President Obama has not “released” his “real” birth certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, July 1, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 29, 2009, April 11, 2011, and April 25, 2011). “I would say that maybe there’s something on there that he doesn’t want people to know,” she says. When Hannity asks her what that might be, she responds: “Like who his father is. Maybe that the father isn’t listed on the birth certificate. That is my only idea.” The progressive media watchdog Media Matters equates Holder’s speculation with radical-right eccentric Andy Martin’s announcement that Obama was “fathered” by a black Muslim activist with Communist ties (see Before October 27, 2008), or blogger Pamela Geller’s speculation that Obama’s father might be civil rights activist Malcolm X (see October 24, 2008). The Media Matters analysis concludes with the observation, “Meanwhile, in the real world, the certification of live birth issued by the state of Hawaii does list a father: Barack Obama Sr.” [Media Matters, 4/27/2011]

Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan excoriates billionaire television host, rumored presidential candidate, and “birther” enthusiast Donald Trump for attacking President Obama’s college career (see April 26, 2011). Sullivan writes: “Like a junkie huffing his own glue, Donald Trump throws in the affirmative action card to pump up the GOP base even more. This one really stretches credulity: the man who edited the Harvard Law Review was not qualified to get into Columbia or Harvard. And then a totally fabricated notion that the president’s long-form birth certificate is missing” (see February 10, 2011). Sullivan calls Trump’s allegations “racist smears, based on fear of the cultural ‘other.’” Sullivan concludes: “I don’t think Trump will last very long. I do think he makes other shameless candidates more acceptable.” [Daily Beast, 4/26/2011]

Fox News anchor Monica Crowley, a guest on Bill O’Reilly’s The O’Reilly Factor, explains why so many people give credence to the “birther” theory that President Obama is not an American citizen, saying: “Listen, if the president is sitting in the White House wondering why the birth certificate issue still has traction, why some of these other issues about his origins and his background have traction, it’s not about those issues per se, though. It’s about the fact that he continues to do things… that are not ‘anti-American,’ they’re ‘un-American.’ His policies—” O’Reilly interjects, “I wouldn’t go that far.” Guest Alan Colmes calls her characterization “really disgusting. It’s really reprehensible that you would go there.… It’s really reprehensible that you would say ‘un-American,’ really reprehensible.” Crowley insists that “her distinction” between “anti-American” and “un-American” has meaning. Obama’s policies on what she calls “wealth redistribution,” on “Obamacare,” and on “expanding the welfare state” are what she says “all feeds into this idea that somehow, fair or not, Obama is not one of us.” O’Reilly concludes the segment by accusing Obama of exhibiting “poor judgment.” Colmes invites Republicans to keep pushing the idea that Obama is “not one of us,” saying that to do so will have them “lose every election.” [Media Matters, 4/26/2011]

Progressive columnist Ari Melber, writing for The Nation, states that billionaire television host, rumored presidential candidate, and “birther” enthusiast Donald Trump is using coded racist messages to attack President Obama. Melber cites recent Trump claims that Obama, whom he called a “terrible student,” could not have gotten into Ivy League universities unless it was somehow due to race (see April 26, 2011), and writes: “By charging that Obama was not admitted based on merit, Trump is suggesting that Obama was admitted because he is black.… He is blatantly attacking Obama’s teenage qualifications for college—a topic so obscure, it was a non-issue in Obama’s exhaustive, two-year-long presidential campaign.” Melber cites the underlying racism of the entire “birther” controversy (see January 24, 2007, September 22, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, November 10, 2008, September 14, 2009, March 2011, April 1, 2011, April 15, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011), and calls Trump’s attacks on Obama’s citizenship and college performance “a coded attack—aimed at the racists but clinging to deniability—[that] curdles into public, blatant racism.” “Birtherism,” Melber writes, “is a putatively non-racial, vaguely constitutional way to challenge the legitimacy of the first black president and appeal to racists without sounding officially racist. [Birther proponents] won’t go away. They are an audience-in-waiting for any amplified race-baiter.” [Nation, 4/27/2011] Melber is echoing sentiments expressed days before by CNN analyst Fareed Zakaria (see April 22, 2011).

An Associated Press report examines the issues surrounding President Obama’s birth certificate in the wake of Obama releasing his “long form” certificate for public scrutiny (see April 27, 2011) and finds racial overtones to the controversy. Writer Rachel Rose Hartman observes that while the controversy surrounding Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s birth status was short-lived and resolved by a single announcement from a set of lawyers (see March 14 - July 24, 2008), the controversy surrounding Obama’s birth status has carried on for nearly three years (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, Around June 28, 2010, March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 27-28, 2011, March 28, 2011, and April 5, 2011). Hartman writes that Obama “has faced a relentless campaign questioning his US citizenship—and thereby the legitimacy of his presidency—that has disregarded the facts” (see June 13, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). After Obama released his “long form” certificate, “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz quickly announced her disbelief in the form, saying that the listing of Obama’s father as “African” cast doubt on the veracity of the document; she said that in 1961, the term that would have been used was “Negro” (see April 27, 2011). Hartman notes that many “birther” critics believe the movement’s “core tenets—and its stubborn resistance to evidence disproving those beliefs—can be traced to racial hostilities. The fundamental birtherist conviction, these critics say, is that an African-American can’t have legitimately won the presidency—and that his elevation to power therefore has to be the result of an elaborate subterfuge.” History professor Peniel Joseph says: “There is a real deep-seated and vicious racism at work here in terms of trying to de-legitimate the president.… This is more than just a conspiracy. I think this is fundamentally connected to white supremacism in this country.” Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. has called “this birther nonsense” “profoundly racist claptrap” (see April 1, 2011), Michael Tomasky has written in the British newspaper The Guardian that the birther conspiracy “had to be the only explanation for how this black man got to the White House.… And if you think race isn’t what this is about at its core… you are delusional” (see April 27, 2011). The Reverend Jesse Jackson noted yesterday that billionaire Donald Trump’s “birther” campaign is rooted in race, saying: “Any discussion of [Obama’s] birthplace is a code word. It calls upon ancient racial fears.” Trump, he said, “is now tapping into code-word fears that go far beyond a rational discourse” (see April 26, 2011). Trump has recently leveled allegations that Obama was only accepted into Columbia and Harvard Universities because of his race (see April 26, 2011). Hartman notes that while “[b]irthers emphatically deny such criticism… it’s difficult to apprehend the ongoing resistance to proof of Obama’s citizenship without crediting racial fear as a significant factor.” For years, the “birther” movement has insisted that the release of the “long form” certificate would settle the issue, but now that the document has been released, the same “birthers” either refuse to accept its validity or are insisting that Obama release a spate of other documents to prove his identity and citizenship, “a level of scrutiny that neither McCain nor Obama’s 43 predecessors in the Oval Office were expected to face” (see April 27, 2011). Trump and others are calling for Obama to release his college transcripts (see April 26, 2011), have alleged that Obama did not write his own memoirs, and, despite all evidence, continue to insist that he is a “closet Muslim” (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008). Jackson and Peniel both note that never before has a sitting president’s nationality been questioned. A recent study found that racially biased whites are far more likely to view Obama as “less American” than Vice President Joe Biden, a white man. That assessment correlates with a profoundly lower view of Obama’s performance as president (see March 2011). National polls continue to find that almost half of Republican voters do not believe Obama was born in the US, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who has blamed Obama for the “birther” controversy, says the issue is irrelevant. [Associated Press, 4/27/2011]

The Arizona Independent publishes a document obtained from the US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services through a Freedom of Information Act request. The document offers further proof that President Obama was born in Hawaii. The document is a memo from August 31, 1961, some three weeks after Obama’s birth (see June 13, 2008 and April 27, 2011), written by William Wood of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS). Wood’s memo says that Barack Obama Sr. was attending the University of Hawaii on a student visa and that a son, Barack Obama II, was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961. The memo refers to the elder Obama’s plans to continue at the University of Hawaii, and the plans of his spouse, Stanley Ann Dunham, to work at the university. The memo reads in part, “They have one child born Honolulu on 8/4/1961—Barack Obama II, child living with mother (she lives with her parents & subject resides at 1482 Alisteastre St.).” The document also shows that Obama Sr. entered the country in 1959, and had received several extensions to his visa. Obama Sr. left the country in 1964 after being denied another visa extension and remaning for a brief period illegally. [Arizona Independent, 4/27/2011; Arizona Independent, 4/27/2011]

Since billionaire television host, rumored presidential candidate, and “birther” enthusiast Donald Trump has garnered so much media coverage for his challenges to President Obama’s citizenship (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, April 14-15, 2011, April 21, 2011, April 24-25, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011), Fox News has tremendously increased its coverage of the “birther” controversy, according to a research analysis by progressive media watchdog Media Matters. “[S]everal Fox News figures have embraced the birther conspiracy theory, while others have repeatedly failed to debunk false claims about Obama’s birth,” the report finds. “So widespread was Fox’s coverage of Trump’s embrace of birtherism that some Fox News hosts reported on and joked about the birther conspiracy theory in segments not relating to Trump.” Since March 5, Fox News has shown 52 segments on the “birther” conspiracy theory, with few exceptions (see April 25, 2011), promoting and expanding on the allegations that Obama is not a legitimate US citizen (see April 26, 2011). According to Media Matters’s analysis, 44 of 52 segments—84 percent—made false claims about Obama’s birth that went unchallenged by hosts or guests, including claims that Obama has never produced a legitimate birth certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008), his grandmother claimed he was born in Kenya (see October 16, 2008 and After), and that Obama has spent $2 million blocking the release of his “real” birth certificate (see April 7-10, 2011). In contrast, when Fox News host and presumed 2012 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee claimed Obama grew up “in Kenya” and then backtracked that claim (see February 28, 2011), Fox spent very little time covering Huckabee’s repudiation of his misstatement. Media Matters only covered Fox News “opinion” shows for its study, including Fox & Friends, Fox & Friends Saturday, Fox & Friends Sunday, Justice with Judge Jeanine, The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, On the Record with Greta van Susteren, Glenn Beck, Huckabee, and Your World with Neil Cavuto. Author and columnist Eric Boehlert notes that before Trump’s media splash, Fox had spent far less time, percentage-wise, on the “birther” controversy, and prominent opinion show hosts such as Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly had criticized “birther” allegations (see July 29, 2009, August 4, 2009, and February 17, 2010). Boehlert writes: “I mean, what are the odds that Fox News would suddenly take a sharp turn towards birtherism at the exact moment Trump started raising questions about Obama’s birth certificate while busy promoting his kinda/maybe candidacy for president? Fox News’s about-face was especially odd considering that when the exact same bogus birther story was raised during the 2008 campaign Fox News virtually boycotted the story. Fox News refused to touch it. As Obama was running for the White House and questions from the far right were raised about Obama’s eligibility and his birthplace, Fox News paid the story no mind. Then in 2009, when Fox News personalities did address the birther issue, it was usually to belittle the story and mock its followers.… But then, just as Trump stepped forward for his Republican star turn, Fox News decided to alter years of editorial judgment and to fully embrace—to celebrate—the birther story, simultaneously aiding Trump’s (right-wing) political fortunes. It’s almost like the two events were coordinated, no? Either way, it’s now obvious Trump and Fox News formed a mutually beneficial political, and media, alliance: Trump used the Fox News platform to rise his profile, while Fox News used Trump’s birther attacks as cover to wallow in the non-story.” Boehlert quotes Fox News analyst Andrea Tantaros on a recent O’Reilly broadcast, explaining why she encouraged the media to cover Trump: “Let the man speak. He’s got a bigger megaphone than [GOP presidential candidates Mitt] Romney, [Tim] Pawlenty, [Newt] Gingrich, than all of them combined. And you know what; he can drive up Obama’s negatives more than any of the other of those GOP candidates.” [Media Matters, 4/27/2011; Media Matters, 4/27/2011]

A portion of President Obama’s ‘long form’ birth certificate. [Source: White House / WorldNetDaily (.com)]President Obama releases his “long form” birth certificate for public view, in an attempt to put questions about his citizenship to rest. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer says in a statement: “The president believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country. It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country.” In 2008, Obama released an official copy of his birth certificate (see June 13, 2008), but many so-called “birthers” have said that “short form” certificate did not fully prove his Hawaiian birth. In his statement, Pfeiffer notes that the “short form” certificate is “the same legal documentation provided to all Hawaiians as proof of birth in state, and the campaign immediately posted it on the Internet.… When any citizen born in Hawaii requests their birth certificate, they receive exactly what the president received. In fact, the document posted on the campaign Web site is what Hawaiians use to get a driver’s license from the state and the document recognized by the federal government and the courts for all legal purposes. That’s because it is the birth certificate. This is not and should not be an open question.” Pfeiffer says: “At a time of great consequence for this country—when we should be debating how we win the future, reduce our deficit, deal with high gas prices, and bring stability to the Middle East, Washington, DC, was once again distracted by a fake issue. The president’s hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country.… Therefore, the president directed his counsel to review the legal authority for seeking access to the long form certificate and to request on that basis that the Hawaii State Department of Health make an exception to release a copy of his long form birth certificate. They granted that exception in part because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting.” [Hawaii Department of Health, 8/4/1961 ; Associated Press, 4/27/2011; White House, 4/27/2011]Signed, Certified as True and Valid - The certificate is signed by the delivery doctor, Obama’s mother, and the local registrar. It certifies that Barack Hussein Obama II was born at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961, to Stanley Ann Dunham Obama at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu. It does not mention religion. Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama, is noted as being born in Kenya, and his mother as being born in Wichita, Kansas. The Hawaiian registrar certifies the new photocopy of the document provided to the White House on April 25 as being a true and valid copy. The White House also releases a letter from Obama on April 22 requesting two certified copies of his original certificate of live birth. The Hawaii Department of Health does not, by law, release the actual birth certificate, but the department makes an exception for Obama given his “status as president of the United States.” Also released is a letter from Loretta Fuddy, Hawaii’s director of health, approving the request. In her approval letter, Fuddy wrote that she hopes the release “will end the numerous inquiries” received by her office. “Such inquiries have been disruptive to staff operations and have strained state resources,” Fuddy wrote. Obama’s personal lawyer, Judith Corley, flew to Hawaii to pick up the documents and brought them back to Washington. She returned with the documents around 5 p.m. April 26. Obama: 'We Do Not Have Time for This Kind of Silliness' - Obama says during a morning press conference that he has been both amused and puzzled by the degree to which his place of birth has become an issue. “We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” he says. “This issue has been going on for two, two and a half years now. I think it started during the campaign. I have watched with bemusement, I’ve been puzzled at the degree at which this thing just kept on going.” The country needs to come together to work on critical issues, he says, but “we’re not going to be able to do it if we are distracted. We’re not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other. We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.” Trump Takes Credit, RNC Blames Obama for Controversy - Billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump has reignited the controversy in recent weeks (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, April 14-15, 2011, April 21, 2011, April 26, 2011, and April 26, 2011) as part of his apparent 2012 presidential campaign bid. Though neither Obama nor Pfeiffer mention Trump by name, he takes full credit for the release. “He should have done it a long time ago. I am really honored to play such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue,” Trump says during a visit to New Hampshire. Trump says he is not yet convinced of the certificate’s authenticity, saying that he and his people are “going to look at it. We have to see if it’s real, if it’s proper.… It’s amazing that all of a sudden it materializes. Why he didn’t do it when the Clintons asked for it. Why he didn’t do it when everyone else was asking about it, I don’t know.” However, Trump says he is “sure it’s the right deal” and is looking forward to moving on to more important issues such as OPEC and China. Trump and other “birthers” have alleged that the long form birth certificate contains information Obama wanted to hide from public view, when in fact the two different versions of the certificate contain virtually the same information. The long form includes the signatures of Obama’s mother and the attending physician. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus calls the issue a distraction, but blames Obama for playing “campaign politics” by addressing it. “The president ought to spend his time getting serious about repairing our economy,” he says. “Unfortunately his campaign politics and talk about birth certificates is distracting him from our number one priority—our economy.” [Associated Press, 4/27/2011; Associated Press, 4/27/2011; USA Today, 4/27/2011; WorldNetDaily, 4/27/2011] Trump also demands that Obama release his complete college transcripts. [Real Clear Politics, 4/27/2011]Questions from CNN - Some observers feel the White House may have been spurred to release the certificate in part because of questions about the controversy from mainstream media reporters. On April 26, White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked a question about Obama’s birth status by CNN’s Ed Henry, at the same time CNN’s Anderson Cooper was airing a “definitive investigation” into the controversy that debunked the “birther” conspiracy theory and attacked Trump for feeding the controversy. Carney called the question “preposterous” and the controversy “a distraction” that had been “settled,” but Henry continued to pursue the issue. [Huffington Post, 4/26/2011]

David Frum, a New York Times columnist who once wrote speeches for the Bush administration, writes on his personal blog “Frum Forum” that today’s release of President Obama’s “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) should bring to an end “the phony controversy” of “birtherism.” He calls the controversy “poisonous and not very subtly racist” (see January 24, 2007, September 22, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, November 10, 2008, September 14, 2009, March 2011, April 1, 2011, April 14-15, 2011, April 15, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011), and asks how the controversy acquired “such a grip on our conservative movement and our Republican party?” To deny that “birtherism” ever existed as a serious component of Republican rhetoric, Frum writes, is “just wrong.” He cites the recent surge in popularity of billionaire television host Donald Trump as a “serious” presidential contender among far-right and tea party voters, and adds: “[N]ot only did conservative media outlets from Fox to Drudge to the Breitbart sites indulge the birthers—but so also did every Republican candidate who said, ‘I take the president at his word.’ Birthers did not doubt the president’s ‘word.’ They were doubting the official records of the state of Hawaii. It’s like answering a 9/11 conspiracist by saying, ‘I take the 9/11 families at their word that they lost their loved ones.’” Still, Frum writes, the racially fueled allegations persist (see April 27, 2011). Trump is now questioning Obama’s acceptance into Harvard Law School (see April 26, 2011), recycling debunked allegations from 2009 that claimed Obama was “placed” in Harvard through the auspices of a black Islamist radical and a Saudi prince (see July 21, 2009). “The too-faint repudiation of birtherism by regular Republicans has shaped not only the Obama brand, but also the Republican brand,” Frum laments. “It was not only white people who heard the implied message about who counts and who does not count as a ‘real American.’” Frum restates his opposition to virtually every policy and initiative advanced by the Obama administration, and writes: “Republicans should be fighting this president on policy, not winking at those who use race as a weapon.… [T]hose who imagine that they somehow enhance the value of [their] citizenship by belittling the American-ness of their president (see March 2011)—they not only disgrace the politics they uphold, but they do damage that will not soon be forgotten by the voters a revived Republicanism must win.” [David Frum, 4/27/2011]

The Republican-dominated Oklahoma legislature approves a bill outlawing affirmative action programs in that state. The proposal would prohibit special treatment based on race or sex in public employment, education, or contracts. Supporters say it would underscore the importance of equality, even though no preferences are now given for jobs, contracts, or college admission. Critics say the proposal plays on racial fears. It will appear on the 2012 ballot for approval by voters. [Associated Press, 4/6/2011] Explaining why he sponsored the bill, T.W. Shannon (R-Lawton) says: “I believe discrimination exists. I don’t think affirmative action has been as successful as we like to believe.” However, Shannon’s colleague Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) has her own explanation: blacks do not work as hard as whites and have less initiative. Kern says: “We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and that’s tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don’t want to study as hard in school? I’ve taught school, and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t study hard because they said the government would take care of them.” Kern says women earn less than men because “they tend to spend more time at home with their families.” One of the opponents of the bill, Mike Shelton (D-Oklahoma City), says: “This body will quote the Bill of Rights and then talk about Muslims every day. They’ll talk about illegal immigrants every day. They’ll talk about homosexuals. Oklahoma is a great state—as long as you fit the profile.” [Tulsa World, 4/27/2011] Think Progress reporter Alex Seitz-Wald writes of Kern, “[H]er bigoted comments reflect a disturbing trend among even mainstream conservatives to blame valuable social safety net programs for creating a culture of dependency or even ‘slavery.’” [Think Progress, 4/28/2011] The Oklahoma House speaker, Republican Kris Steele, refuses to reprimand Kern, saying that a written apology she issues is enough. On May 2, the House votes to reprimand Kern anyway, led by Shelton, who will say: “We are trying to be a player within the United States as well as the world. The comments by Sally Kern make us step back and it makes people look at the state of Oklahoma as a different place.” Republican Paul Wesselhoft is harshly critical of the reprimand, saying it “flies in the face of every Sunday school lesson I’ve ever had. Kern issued a sincere apology. My faith teaches me that I’m to forgive.” Republican Randy Grau will say that the reprimand may have a “chilling effect on free speech.” [Think Progress, 5/3/2011] Three years ago, Kern said on the Oklahoma House floor that homosexuality was more dangerous than terrorism; she was not reprimanded (see March 3-27, 2008).

Author Jim Kennedy writes that the recent release of President Obama’s “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) will do nothing to “put an end to the antics of the bizarro-Quixotic birthers… because the birther movement is the Arkansas Project of 2011.” Kennedy is referring to the so-called “Arkansas Project,” a loosely organized effort to bring down the Clinton presidency that resulted in years of groundless allegations and investigations surrounding the Whitewater land deal, and other related allegations, that resulted in the unsuccessful impeachment of President Clinton. Kennedy writes: “The intent of both is the same: paint a false portrait of a Democratic president on a canvas of lies. Birthers claim that Barack Obama was not born in America and is therefore not legitimately serving as president. A simple, however faulty, assertion. But it is merely a gateway to a larger, misleading construct about President Obama—that he is not ‘one of us’ (see April 27, 2011). His values are alien to ours. He’s not fully American. He might be a Muslim, not a Christian. He has a radical agenda that will take our country down a path of socialism. The birthers don’t have to prove their point to make a point. In their scheme, the mere repetition of the question about where the president is from serves to raise questions about where the president is taking us.” Of the Arkansas Project’s claims of million-dollar boondoggles, sex orgies, drug deals, murders, and more, “[n]one of those charges proved true,” he writes, “but the Arkansas Project was never intended to be a search for the truth. It was a shiny, metal object designed to lead the media on a wild goose chase and mislead the public about the values of the Clintons. Like the birther movement, the Arkansas Project represented the marriage of lies and right-wing political agendas.” Significant differences between the two exist, Kennedy writes, most notably the reluctance of many in the mainstream media to pursue the “birther” claims, as opposed to the Arkansas Project allegations, which Kennedy writes, led “many journalists and nearly all Republicans [to] simply [take] the bait and [go] off and running in search of misdeeds that did not exist.” He concludes: “There are fewer media allies for the birthers, and even some noteworthy Republicans are distancing themselves from their cause. Yet their mission will continue, abetted by the likes of Donald Trump. No doubt they will create some excuse to question the new birth certificate, just as some continue to claim [former White House aide] Vince Foster was murdered. [Foster committed suicide, but the Arkansas Project alleged Hillary Clinton had him murdered.] A long form won’t dissuade those who are in it for the long haul. For the goal of the birthers is not to reach a conclusion about the birthplace of a president based on facts. The goal is to encourage the public to reach a conclusion about the values of a president based on lies.” [Huffington Post, 4/27/2011]

Conservative blogger Melissa Clouther, writing for the influential RedState (.com), says that President Obama released his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) because the “birther” issue had “turned bad” for him “some time before the latest round in the press brought the issue to a head.” Clouther echoes statements by Republican political operative Karl Rove, who says Obama used the “birther” controversy for his own ends until it began to “spin out of control” (see April 28, 2011). She writes: “Americans, even people who would normally not fall for a rumor that President Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, started asking: ‘Yeah, why won’t the president just release the stupid birth certificate? I have a birth certificate. This is no big deal. Why is he making a big deal?’ It is easier to ask outrageous questions about the president than it is to admit making a mistake about electing him to begin with. It’s easier to believe you’re deceived than to make a stupid decision.” The decision to release the certificate was purely political, Clouthier writes: “He knows, and has known, for a while now, that the birth certificate issue is not fun for him anymore. When he was wink winking away at his buddies in the media (winky wink Jounolist!), it was delicious making people look like fools. Aren’t those right wing crazies crazy? Tee hee!! President Obama was treating the issue like a juvenile. Unsurprising. He presides as a child. The last two months, though, have been less fun. With his poll numbers diving and people wanting to be mad at him, President Obama decided to come out today.… He could have stopped the nonsense at any time. He didn’t because it served his purposes.… The birth certificate rumors no longer help President Obama.” [Melissa Clouther, 4/27/2011] Clouther fails to note that the Obama campaign released Obama’s birth certificate almost three years ago (see June 13, 2008). Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters will note that for weeks, conservatives have demanded that Obama release the certificate (see March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, April 5, 2011, and April 24-25, 2011). [Media Matters, 4/28/2011]

Michael Savage, a conservative radio host, tells his listeners that President Obama is “emotionally and intellectually” similar to Cambodian dictator and mass murderer Pol Pot. “Communists are murderers,” Savage says. “They’re not good people. Communism cost 100 million people in the last century. We have a Communist in the White House.” He asks if Obama will preside over a similar death toll, and says it is not so much what Obama will do as “what his minions will do.” He tells the story of Camobodian Pol Pot, “another nice, mild professor” who studied Marxism in Paris, went back to his country, and began “transform[ing] his nation” with socialist, Marxist-inspired “social reforms.” Pot felt his country’s “mild capitalism” was “unfair, and he wanted the rich to pay a little bit more.” His “reforms… ended up with a mountain of skulls,” Savage says. “Watch out where the rhetoric starts,” he says. “It always ends up with a mountain of skulls.” He implies that Obama, like Pot, is a murderer, but avoids the accusation outright (and gives no evidence to support the implication), saying: “It doesn’t matter whether Obama himself is a murderer. What matters is where his rhetoric can take this nation. When he starts in with the class warfare, when he starts in with ‘tax the rich,’ when he starts in with ‘it’s only fair,’ all you gotta do is look back in history, and don’t look for Hitler. Look back to Pol Pot and Cambodia. That is the closest fit I can find. And many people don’t understand how close Obama is, emotionally and intellectually, to Pol Pot.” Savage says that Pot used “14- and 15-year-old animals who wore red scarves” (the source of the moniker “Khmer Rouge”) to carry out his systematic brutality, and says Obama can easily use the “millions of unemployed youth who would gladly put on a red scarf and come to your neighborhood and put you into a slave labor camp. All they need is the right person in the White House to organize them. Be very careful indeed with your call for the redistribution of wealth and fairness. It always ends up with a mountain of skulls.” [Media Matters, 4/27/2011] According to a Yale University study, between 1975 and 1979, around 1.7 million Cambodians—a fifth of the nation’s population—died in what the study called “one of the worst human tragedies of the last century.… [T]he Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale.” In 2007, Pot, who died in 1998, was found to have committed “crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, homicide, torture, and religious persecution.” [Yale University, 2010] Savage has called the landmark civil rights decision Brown v. Board “sickening” (see May 18, 2004), accused Obama of being educated in a radical Islamic madrassa (see January 10, 2008 and April 3, 2008) and being a potential “radical Muslim” (see February 21, 2008), called Obama’s presidential victory “the first affirmative-action election in American history” (see February 1, 2008), accused Obama of being sympathetic towards the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese of World War II (see March 13, 2008), said that homeless Americans should be put in “work camps” (see June 6, 2008), called Obama an “Afro-Leninist” (see June 6, 2008), said that welfare recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008), accused Obama of using his grandmother’s death to conceal his “efforts” to falsify his Hawaiian birth certificate (see November 10, 2008), accused Obama of planning to fire all the “competent white men” in government once he became president (see November 18, 2008), accused Obama of desiring his own “Hitler Youth” program (see September 2, 2009), and compared Obama to Chinese Communist dictator Mao Zedong (see December 3, 2009) and Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (see May 25, 2010). He has compared Obama to Pol Pot before (see December 17, 2009).

Officials of the Terry Lakin Action Fund, a group that funded and supported former Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin when he refused orders to deploy to Afghanistan because of his doubts about President Obama’s citizenship (see Before April 13, 2010), now say that had Obama released his “long form” birth certificate before Lakin’s refusal to follow deployment orders (see April 27, 2011), Lakin would have obeyed those orders and thusly never would have been court-martialed and dishonorably discharged from service (see December 16, 2010). The Action Fund demands that Obama issue Lakin a “full and complete presidential pardon” for his conviction of six months, “including restoration of pay, benefits, and service.” The Action Fund statement reads in part: “This document which was so casually dropped on the news corps could just have easily been provided 12 months ago or two years ago. Even six months ago, it would have prevented LTC Lakin being manacled and hauled away to Fort Leavenworth prison for standing up for the Constitution, consistent with the oath he took as an officer, and the rule of law.” The statement continues: “Had the Obama administration agreed to allow the document unveiled today and other related documents as requested for discovery in Terry Lakin’s first pre-trial hearing, the matter would have been resolved and soldiers assured their military orders were lawful, given by a lawful commander in chief. A good soldier, having played his part in this issue, would have returned enthusiastically to the service for which he is so ably trained.” The statement also questions the authenticity of the “long form” certificate, demanding that it be “submitted for forensics testing to determine its authenticity.” It continues, “[S]imilarly, the Kenyan birth certificate that has been widely circulating on the Internet and on Capitol Hill—should be tested” (see August 4, 2009). [TPM Muckraker, 4/27/2011; Terry Lakin Action Fund, 4/27/2011] The Action Fund, on its Web site, calls itself “[t]he only site designated by Terry Lakin and his family to assist with direct support of Terry’s legal defense and his family’s needs. Terry is standing up for the nation. He needs the nation’s help.” The site features a statement by Lakin’s wife that reads: “My husband is going to prison because of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. I’m sure you agree that’s a heavy price to pay for standing up for what is right.” [Terry Lakin Action Fund, 4/27/2011]

A screenshot of Fox News (.com)‘s headline announcing the release of Obama’s birth certificate. [Source: Think Progress]Responses to President Obama’s release of his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) are mixed. Fox News places a banner headline on its Web site saying, “White House Releases What It Says is President Obama’s Long-Form Birth Certificate.” [Think Progress, 4/27/2011] Fox News later replaces the original headline with the more conventional, “White House Releases Obama Birth Certificate.” [Media Matters, 4/27/2011] Influential conservative blogger and political pundit Erick Erickson, echoing billionaire television host and rumored 2012 presidential candidate Donald Trump, demands that Obama release his college transcripts, saying, “That’s the issue for me.” Erickson concludes: “When the birth certificate is reviewed and we can see what most of us have always known—that he was born in Hawaii—we can move on. For some, moving on will be to wonder what religion the man is” (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008). Commenters on Erickson’s blog immediately begin calling the newly released certificate a “fake,” and one says, “I just wish he’d release the actual real certificate.” Another demands the release of all of Obama’s college and medical transcripts, and another recommends, “We need someone to start looking into recent purchases of printing apparatuses from the 60s.” Comments posted on the conservative news and gossip site Drudge Report are heavily skewed towards calling the certificate a fake. [Erick Erickson, 4/27/2011] Conservative news blog WorldNetDaily (WND), which has trumpeted much of the “birther” controversy, headlines its article, “Born in the USA?” Its article includes a caveat, “If the document proves valid…” and goes on to claim: “[I]t also could prove his ineligibility because of its references to his father. Some of the cases challenging Obama have explained that he was a dual citizen through his father at his birth, and they contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born citizens.” WND is referring to a host of lawsuits challenging Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen” that have been thrown out of court and debunked as contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. WND publisher Joseph Farah says: “But it is important to remember there are still dozens of other questions concerning this question of eligibility that need to be resolved to assure what has become a very skeptical public concerning Barack Obama’s parentage, his adoption, his citizenship status throughout his life, and why he continues to cultivate a culture of secrecy around his life.” Farah says the document “raises as many questions as it answers.” Bloggers at Free Republic echo WND’s claims, saying that the new document proves Obama is “not a natural born citizen.” Some say that since Obama “renounced his [US] citizenship” for Kenyan citizenship, the new document proves nothing. Another commenter posts a picture of a debunked, faked “birth certificate” showing Obama as being born in Kenya. [WorldNetDaily, 4/27/2011; Free Republic (.com), 4/27/2011; Washington Independent, 4/27/2011] Farah is joined in his doubts about the veracity of the certificate by Paul Joseph Watson, a writer and editor for Alex Jones’s Web site Prison Planet. Watson again raises the issue of Obama being a “natural born citizen,” because of his father’s Kenyan ancestry and citizenship, and writes, “Since the American people have been habitually lied to about everything under the sun, with trust in government at an all time low, a PDF file put out directly by the Obama administration itself isn’t going to make the furore die down at all, and will only lead to claims that the document is a carefully crafted fake.” [Paul Joseph Watson, 4/27/2011] Blogger Karl Denninger of Market-Ticker says the doctor’s signature on the certificate is false, and alleges that information on the certificate was “tampered with.” [Karl Denninger, 4/27/2011; Karl Denninger, 4/27/2011] Two lawyers who filed rejected suits challenging Obama’s citizenship, Philip Berg (see August 21-24, 2008) and Orly Taitz (see August 1-4, 2009), weigh in on the issue. Berg says that Obama was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, and thus lost his US citizenship: “I think the issue is that he’s not any more natural born. I don’t care if he releases his birth certificate or whatever. Let’s see his records coming back through immigration.” Taitz says her “analysis” of the document shows that Obama is using a fake Social Security number: “In Obama’s Selective Service [document], his social security is listed as a Connecticut Social Security number” (see April 27, 2011). Politico’s Ben Smith reminds readers that “Taitz… has tried to have forgeries introduced into court filings before.” [Politico, 4/27/2011] Author Jerome Corsi has made similar allegations about Obama’s Social Security number (see September 21, 2010). Barbara Morrill, writing for the progressive blog Daily Kos, says flatly, “Birthers aren’t satisfied because no matter how many documents Barack Obama releases it will never be enough, because there isn’t a document in the world that will turn him white.” [Barbara Morrill, 4/27/2011]

Fox News’s morning talk show Fox and Friends hosts the Reverend Robert Jeffress, who repeatedly suggests that President Obama is a “secret Muslim” (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, April 18, 2008, and April 26, 2011). Jeffress, the senior pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist Church, tells interviewer Steve Doocy: “Steve, let’s look at what’s really going on here. On the one hand, we have a president who never met a Muslim holiday he didn’t like, or at least wasn’t willing to issue a proclamation for; and on the other hand, here he is refusing to acknowledge publically the most important event in Christian faith, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Jeffress is referring to Obama’s supposed refusal to acknowledge Easter. “And yet the White House is wondering, why do 20 percent of Americans believe the president is a Muslim? Well, as my kids would say, ‘Duh.’ You know, I mean, it’s actions like these that really make people wonder what it is the president really believes.… I really think, Steve, there’s only one of two explanations. Either he has advisers who are telling him that it’s politically expedient to ignore Christianity and elevate other world religions like Islam. And if that’s the case, Republicans need to pray that those advisers stay in place through the 2012 election cycle. The only other explanation is that there’s something deep within the president himself that will not allow him to issue these public proclamations about Christianity, when he on Easter will issue a proclamation about Earth Day, or he will recognize Muslim holidays. I think either explanation is deeply troubling for Christians.” [Media Matters, 4/26/2011; Media Matters, 4/27/2011] On the same day, pundits at Fox News and the Washington Times attack Obama’s April 24 attendance of Easter services at Washington’s Shiloh Baptist Church, claiming his choice to attend that church is evidence that he is a “black nationalist” (see April 27, 2011).

Less than two hours after President Obama releases his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) and posts a PDF (Portable Data File) copy on the Internet, Bryan Michael Nixon, an art director with an Atlanta advertising firm, makes a blog post about his initial examination of the PDF copy. Nixon says that after opening the file in the Adobe graphics program Illustrator, it is clear that the document is composed of “multiple elements.” He writes, “This in no way proves that anything on it is fake… [h]ow to interpret that is up to the viewer.” He opens his blog post with a capitalized declaration, “I AM NOT A BIRTHER!” [Bryan Keith Nixon, 4/27/2011] By the afternoon, Nixon’s post is a front-page headline on the conservative news and gossip Web site Drudge Report, sparks a storm of claims and counterclaims about the document’s authenticity, and is quickly picked up by radio host Alex Jones and a plethora of Web sites. The claims that the certificate is “fake” are based in part on Nixon’s observation that the PDF file contains “multiple elements,” or “layers,” particularly two separate “layers” of background image and foreground text. Within minutes of the Nixon post, a forum participant at the Free Republic, a conservative blog and message board, writes: “No, I am analyzing an eloctronice [sic] document and saying that there is no way that this was a scanned image [sic] It was made of LAYERS in software [sic]” Another poster writes: “I opened it in Photoshop Elements and saw those white areas behind the text. YES! That image was built up, not scanned from a document.” The claim that the “layers” “prove” the certificate is fake is based on what experts call a fundamental lack of understanding of how PDF files work. Many PDFs, including the Obama certificate image, use optical character recognition (OCR) to recognize and reproduce lettering, and place those letters into a separate image. Reporter Benjy Sarlin will write, “This explains why you’re able to highlight and copy raw text from some PDF files even though it’s actually not a word processing document.” Shortly after Drudge headlines Nixon’s blog post, the National Review, inundated with emails about the “layer” theory, issues a comprehensive debunking of the “fraud” claim. “We looked into it and dismissed it,” reporter Nathan Goulding writes. Goulding uses a scanned copy of his magazine’s cover to make a PDF file, and, opening the file in Adobe Illustrator, shows that the PDF scan contains multiple layers. He writes of the layers: “Quite simply, they look like they were created programmatically, not by a human. What’s plausible is that somewhere along the way—from the scanning device to the PDF-creation software, both of which can perform OCR (optical character recognition)—these partial/pseudo-text images were created and saved. What’s not plausible is that the government spent all this time manufacturing Obama’s birth certificate only to commit the laughably rookie mistake of exporting the layers from Photoshop, or whatever photo editing software they are meant to have used. It’s likely that whoever scanned the birth certificate in Hawaii forgot to turn off the OCR setting on the scanner. Let’s leave it at that.” Sarlin writes: “The fringe theory’s rapid spread within hours of the certificate’s release presents almost a perfect example of one of the White House’s justifications for taking on the birther issue—namely, that thanks to the Internet, conspiracy theories can migrate quickly from the fringe and into the mainstream if left unchecked. In this case, it took only hours.” He concludes, “[B]irthers have wasted no time in promoting alternate theories undermining the president’s legitimacy since the release of the long form birth certificate.” [Free Republic (.com), 4/27/2011; National Review, 4/27/2011; TPM Muckraker, 4/29/2011] Two days later, an Adobe Illustrator expert proclaims the certificate genuine (see April 29, 2011).

Conservative radio pundit Rush Limbaugh tells listeners that President Obama released his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) because of polling data. “[E]verybody’s asking: ‘Why now? Why now?’” he says. “I think I’ve got the answer. I think it’s all about polling data. I think up ‘til now the polling data showed that it was a winning issue for Obama. The birthers were considered crackpots and the polling data showed as long as it continued that way, that there was hay to be made by Obama by not releasing the birth certificate and stoking these people. But then [billionaire television host and ‘birther’ enthusiast Donald] Trump comes along, and I really believe that the polling data, the internal polling data, the White House shows that the issue was starting to take place. You saw that poll yesterday, USA Today, 38 percent, 40 percent, whatever it was of the American people don’t think he’s born in this country. I think the polling data shifted, and it wasn’t all Republicans in that poll that showed that shockingly high number.” [Rush Limbaugh, 4/27/2011] Limbaugh is referring to an April 26 poll conducted by the Gallup organization for USA Today that says 38 percent of Americans “definitely” believe Obama was born in the US, 18 percent say he “probably” was, 15 percent say he “probably” was born in another country, and 9 percent say he was “definitely” born in another country. [USA Today, 4/26/2011] Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters will note that for weeks, conservatives have demanded that Obama release the certificate (see March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, April 5, 2011, and April 24-25, 2011). [Media Matters, 4/28/2011]

The Washington Times illustrates its column asking if Obama is a ‘black nationalist’ with this graphic of the Presidential Seal using the Black Panther raised fist and color scheme. [Source: Washington Times]The Washington Post reports that Shiloh Baptist Church, a well-known house of worship in Washington, DC, has received over 100 death threats after President Obama and his family visited it for Easter on April 24, and after Fox News host Sean Hannity, reporting on Obama’s Easter visit to the church, aired a video clip of Shiloh’s Reverend Wallace Charles Smith giving a speech in January 2010 in which he said some people espousing racial prejudice do so “under the protective cover of talk radio.” Smith tells a Post reporter: “We received a fax that had the image of a monkey with a target across i[t]s face. My secretary has received telephone calls that have been so vulgar until she has had to hang up.” Smith shares some of the emails he has received with the reporter, and says that he has not yet notified authorities. He is consulting with church leaders about what steps to take. The church was founded in the 1860s by former slaves. Hannity aired the clip on April 25, one day after Obama’s Easter visit. In the videotape, Smith said: “It may not be Jim Crow anymore. Now, Jim Crow wears blue pinstripes, goes to law school, and carries fancy briefs in cases. And now, Jim Crow has become James Crow, esquire. And he doesn’t have to wear white robes anymore [a reference to the Ku Klux Klan] because now he can wear the protective cover of talk radio or can get a regular news program on Fox.” Smith tells the Post reporter that he had been asked to give a speech on racism and that he “was giving some background on what I thought were some of the issues regarding race in this country.” Hannity compared Smith’s speech to remarks by Obama’s former Chicago pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (see January 6-11, 2008), whom Obama repudiated after learning that Wright had said the 9/11 attacks were “America’s chickens… coming home to roost.” Hannity told listeners: “Wright’s contentious sermons hit the airwaves and forced Obama eventually to denounce his spiritual leader of more than 20 years. Now, here’s the twist: Dr. Wallace Charles Smith doesn’t think that there’s anything wrong with what Jeremiah Wright preached. I don’t believe that it is a coincidence out of all the churches in the country that Obama finds himself sitting in, why is he always in pews listening to such controversial spiritual leaders?” Hannity says he asked Smith to comment on his broadcast and offered Smith a slot on his show, but Smith refused. “We played his own words in full context but now it’s time for him to explain,” Hannity says. [Washington Post, 4/27/2011] The day after Easter, Fox Nation, the blog of Fox News, falsely claimed that Obama was the first president to attend services at Shiloh Baptist and extended the attack on Smith’s “shocking” sermons. [Fox Nation, 4/25/2011] Days before Easter, the Post, announcing Obama’s choice to attend Shiloh for the morning’s service, noted, “The church has hosted other presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.” An April 27 article adds that President George H.W. Bush also attended services there. [Washington Post, 4/22/2011; Washington Post, 4/27/2011] Washington Times columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner echoes the same questions that Hannity raises, asking if Obama is “a black nationalist” and calling Smith “a race-baiting black nationalist” who is “a more polished version” of Wright. “Mr. Smith lacks the bombast of Mr. Wright but peddles the same philosophy of racialism, grievance-mongering, and black victimology,” Kuhner claims, and cites a recent sermon by Smith decrying institutionalized racism as “evidence” before claiming that segregation and racism no longer exist to any real extent in the nation. Kuhner says that Smith, and by extension Obama, equate conservatives with racists who want to “perpetuate a watered-down form of apartheid.” Kuhner then claims that conservatives, not progressives and liberals, are historical champions of civil rights (see March 12, 1956 and After), and attacks affirmative action programs as perpetuating racism. [Washington Times, 4/27/2011]

New Yorker columnist David Remnick joins a number of media figures and others in proclaiming the “birther” controversy, now presumably settled by President Obama’s issuance of his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011), to be rooted in racism (see April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011). Remnick writes: “There is the birther fantasy; the fantasy that Bill Ayers wrote Dreams from My Father (see August 1, 2008 and After and May 7, 2010); the fantasy that the president has some other father, and not Barack Obama Sr. (see October 24, 2008 and Before October 27, 2008); the fantasy that Obama got into Harvard Law School with the help of a Saudi prince and the Nation of Islam (see July 21, 2009). There is a veritable fantasy industry at work online and in the book-publishing industry; there are dollars to be made. The cynicism of the purveyors of these fantasies is that they know very well what they are playing at, the prejudices they are fanning: that Obama is foreign, a fake, incapable of writing a book, incapable of intellectual achievement. Let’s say what is plainly true (and what the president himself is reluctant to say): these rumors, this industry of fantasy, are designed to arouse a fear of the Other, of an African-American man with a white American mother and a black Kenyan father.” The only “radical” things about Barack Hussein Obama, Remnick writes, are his race and his name. “[E]ven now, more than two years after the fact, this is deeply disturbing to many people, and, at the same time, the easiest way to arouse visceral opposition to him.” Opposition to Obama based on these qualities is, Remnick writes, “a conscious form of race-baiting, of fear-mongering.” Remnick accuses billionaire television host and birther enthusiast Donald Trump of directly and deliberately involving himself in such race-bating, but, he concludes, “[t]he shame is that there are still many more around who, in the name of truth-telling, are prepared to pump the atmosphere full of poison.” [New Yorker, 4/27/2011]

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, speaking on his daily radio program, claims that President Obama released his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) to distract the press from a press conference being given by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. Beck says: “The president of the United States is about to speak shortly [about his birth certificate]. Stations, we will carry it live, live, live on this program. Gas prices, sure, out of control. Middle East, sure, on fire. Ben Bernanke going to give the first press conference for the Fed for the first time in 97 years today, but today is the day the birth certificate is released. You have got to be kidding me. Are we really down to this? We’re really down to this? The birth certificate? I mean, it was bad when we were down to the, you know, Final Four in the brackets, but now we’ve got the birth certificate talk and the president is going to hold a press conference.… [T]his is because Bernanke is speaking today. Watch the markets move today. Why is the Fed—this is what I’ve been trying to figure out—why is the Fed holding a press conference for the first time in 97 years? Why? Something is coming gang, something is coming. Now at the same day, the same time, why is the president of the United States choosing today to release the birth certificate?… There is no way this is being released today for no reason. There’s no way. They’ve had this for two years—three years this has been going on. This rumor was started by Hillary Clinton. This was a Clinton tactic.… So now they’ve had it since Clinton. They could have done this since Clinton. So why?” [Media Matters, 4/27/2011; Media Matters, 4/27/2011] Former Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) makes the same claim. In a post on her Twitter account, Palin writes: “Media, admit it. Trump forced the issue. Now, don’t let the WH distract you w/the birth crt from what Bernanke says today. Stay focused, eh?” [Media Matters, 4/27/2011]

Journalist and author David Corn examines the media’s reaction to President Obama’s release of his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011), writing that Washington reporters were, from the time just before Obama’s press briefing to the period of intensive coverage and analysis immediately following, alternating between expressing incredulity that Obama would spend time on such a “minor” issue and, in Corn’s words, “jumping up and down in anticipation.” Obama made the decision in large part to put an end to the endless media coverage going to the “birther” controversy that he feels would be better spent on analyzing and covering the discussions about the nation’s budget woes. In his brief address regarding the release of the document, Obama says: “[T]wo weeks ago, when the Republican House had put forward a budget that will have huge consequences potentially to the country, and when I gave a speech about my budget and how I felt that we needed to invest in education and infrastructure and making sure that we had a strong safety net for our seniors even as we were closing the deficit, during that entire week the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we’re going to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.” The entire controversy is a “distraction,” he says, that needs to stop soaking up huge amounts of media coverage. In the moments before the press briefing, Obama commented on a “break-in” by NBC political reporter Chuck Todd to that network’s normal broadcast schedule: “I was just back there listening to Chuck—he was saying, it’s amazing that he’s not going to be talking about national security. I would not have the networks breaking in if I was talking about that, Chuck, and you know it.” Corn writes, “Ending the birther conspiracy allowed him to nudge the political media and demonstrate he’s the mature leader in town.” Obama wanted to deliver the message himself, Corn writes: “He wanted to come to the podium and take point on the birther rebuttal, using the occasion to address that larger problem and to demonstrate his own desire to rise above political pettiness in order to make Washington work for the citizenry. So rather than just release the records and allow the cable chatterers to chew up the material (and bash [billionaire ‘birther’ enthusiast Donald] Trump), the White House deployed the president to throw the knock-out punch, realizing that it had a much better chance to cut through the clutter if he was the messenger.” Corn concludes with a rhetorical question: “[C]an [Obama] turn the end of birtherism into a teachable moment? That may well depend on how the media covers it.” [Mother Jones, 4/27/2011]

Conservative blogger Pamela Geller, who for years has stirred the “birther” controversy surrounding President Obama’s birth certificate (see July 20, 2008, October 24, 2008, and August 4, 2009), appears on Fox Business Channel to discuss the release of President Obama’s “long form” certificate (see April 27, 2011). Using a poster-size reproduction of the certificate as a prop, Geller says the certificate is “actually not a birth certificate,” calling it a “certificate of live birth.” Host Eric Bolling insists that the certificate has been “Photoshopped” (i.e. altered using the graphics program Photoshop) because of a “green border” surrounding the certificate. Geller agrees that the border is “suspect.” Bolling says the certificate “opens up the can of worms that there are at least questions for it.” Both Bolling and Geller appear to be basing their “analysis” on the quickly-debunked claim that the “layering” of the PDF image of the certificate “proves” it is a fake (see April 27, 2011). Fox contributor Monica Crowley says billionaire real estage mogul and television host Donald Trump “forced the president’s hand to the point where he actually produced this document that we’re talking about.” She says Obama took a “direct slam at Donald Trump” by calling those who continue to question the legitimacy of his birth “sideshows and carnival barkers.” However, Crowley says, “we’ve got this document produced today, which means President Obama zero, carnival barker one.” Guest Keith Ablow agrees with Crowley that Trump deserves the credit for “forcing” Obama to release the certificate. Bolling says that Obama’s timing in releasing the certificate—on the same day that Trump appears in New Hampshire as part of what some consider to be his preparations to enter the 2012 presidential campaign—is obviously an attempt to upstage Trump. Ablow says there is some as-yet unknown reason why Obama has not released this “long form” certificate until now (Ablow does not inform viewers that Hawaiian state law prohibits the “long form” certificate from being given to anyone, and that Obama needed to get a special dispensation from the Hawaiian State Department to be given a copy—see July 1, 2009). Crowley cites the theory of author and conspiracist Jerome Corsi (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, October 9, 2008, July 21, 2009, September 21, 2010, January 18, 2011, and March 27-28, 2011), who is about to release a book that will purport to prove Obama is not a citizen; “I think what Obama was trying to do today,” she says, “is preempt that, try to steal the thunder away from this book that’s coming out, so that nobody will pay attention to the Corsi book.” Bolling informs viewers that the wife and son of the doctor who signed the birth certificate in 1961, who has since passed away, “had no idea” that he signed the certificate. “If you gave birth to the president of the United States,” Bolling says, “don’t you think your family would know about it?” Geller concludes the segment by citing an array of Obama’s “life documents” that she says have been kept out of the public eye (see September 11, 2008, Around June 28, 2010, and April 26, 2011), and accuses the media of “protecting this man” from scrutiny. [Media Matters, 4/27/2011; Media Matters, 4/27/2011] A day later, the progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters notes that the doctor that signed the birth certificate died in 2003. Reporter Ben Dimiero will write: “Let that sink in for a second. At the time, Barack Obama was a little-known state senator in Illinois. If the doctor had told his family before he died that he delivered the future president, that would have spawned a much more interesting conspiracy theory (he’s a wizard!). Apparently Eric Bolling thinks obstetricians give their families a list of the most interesting people they delivered—with a special section for ‘potential future presidents’—before they die.” [Media Matters, 4/28/2011] Two days later, Geller will label Obama “a b_stard, literally and figuratively” (see April 29, 2011).

Lawrence O’Donnell and Orly Taitz on O’Donnell’s MSNBC show ‘The Last Word.’ [Source: Mediaite (.com)]MSNBC talk show host Lawrence O’Donnell has an angry exchange with “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz (see November 12, 2008 and After, March 13, 2009, August 1-4, 2009, September 16-21, 2009, September 17, 2009, October 29, 2009, March 15, 2010, April 16, 2010, July 7 - August 16, 2010, August 9, 2010 - January 11, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011), who for years has insisted that President Obama’s “short form” birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) does not prove his citizenship. In light of Obama’s recent release of the “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011), O’Donnell tells viewers that he has invited Taitz onto the show to see if she will apologize for her years of insistence that Obama is not a citizen. Taitz refuses to address the issue of the certificate, and instead attempts to tout her latest conspiracy theory, involving Obama’s Selective Service records that she says prove he has used a different Social Security number in the past (see April 27, 2011 and April 27, 2011). A clearly incensed O’Donnell repeatedly refuses to listen to her charges, and asks her repeatedly, “Will you talk about Barack Obama’s birth certificate?” After she continues to push her charge, even demanding that he give a close-up to the document she is attempting to show the camera, O’Donnell says: “All right, that’s it. Get her off this show. Get out. You’re not going to talk about the birth certificate so roll the tapes. Go home, you’re fired. Go play with Donald Trump.” [MSNBC, 4/27/2011; Raw Story, 4/28/2011] “Look, she’s crazy,” he says. “I invited a crazy person on this show to see if the crazy person… could say something responsive, something human, to the document that was released today… and she wants to play with all of her other kid’s toys.” [Huffington Post, 4/27/2011; MSNBC, 4/27/2011] After ending the interview and having Taitz taken off screen, O’Donnell tells viewers that he had not anticipated Taitz’s attempt to dodge any discussion of the birth certificate and instead talk about a new and different conspiracy theory. Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher writes: “I doubt that. He has clearly studied Orly’s modus operandi, and was ready for the barrage of patter. O’Donnell was a tad merciless, but it’s hard to cry any crocodile tears for Taitz, who has been given far too much attention so far.” [Mediaite (.com), 4/27/2011] The Huffington Post calls the segment “a wild, high-decibel, nearly incomprehensible interview.” [Huffington Post, 4/27/2011]

California lawyer Orly Taitz, who has long questioned President Obama’s citizenship (see November 12, 2008 and After, March 13, 2009, August 1-4, 2009, September 16-21, 2009, September 17, 2009, October 29, 2009, March 15, 2010, April 16, 2010, July 7 - August 16, 2010, August 9, 2010 - January 11, 2011, and April 27, 2011) to the point where a Georgia judge has called her “delusional” (see October 13-16, 2009), says that she has doubts about the authenticity of Obama’s long-form birth certificate. Specifically, she says that a real birth certificate from 1961 would have listed Obama’s race as “Negro” and not “African.” She says: “Look, I applaud this release. I think it’s a step in the right direction. I credit Donald Trump in pushing this issue.” However, she adds: “In those years… when they wrote race, they were writing ‘Negro’ not ‘African.’ In those days nobody wrote African as a race, it just wasn’t one of the options. It sounds like it would be written today, in the age of political correctness, and not in 1961 when they wrote white or Asian or ‘Negro.‘… It looks like terminology that would be used today, not 1961.” She continues to insist that because Obama’s father is Kenyan, Obama is ineligible for the presidency because he is not a “natural born citizen,” in spite of being contradicted by the Fourteenth Amendment. [TPM Muckraker, 4/27/2011; Wall Street Journal, 4/27/2011] She also wants to know why the certificate lists the address of Obama’s grandparents, 6085 Kalanianaole Highway in Honolulu, and not his parents’ address. Still, she says the birth certificate is an improvement over the previous “short form” certificate released by Obama in 2008 (see June 13, 2008). “I have to say that this is a step in the right direction,” she says, “just as the release of the Watergate tapes was a step in right direction [sic] by Richard Nixon (see July 13-16, 1973). And like Richard Nixon, there’s a good chance this will cost him his presidency (see August 8, 1974). It is a much better document than we had before.” [Wall Street Journal, 4/27/2011]

Journalist Michael Tomasky, in a column for The Guardian, says the entire “birther” conspiracy theory, which for three years has questioned President Obama’s US citizenship, “is madness, and that the madness comes down to the fact that the president is, for a certain depressingly high percentage of Americans, an Other with a capital O—the kind of person who, to their way of thinking, could not possibly have been legitimately elected the president of any United States they know.” An entire array of “alternate” explanations has been advanced—ACORN, a voter registration and poverty-advocacy group, “stole the election for him,” perhaps, or a “cabal of shifty liberal journalists, many of whom merely happen to be Jewish (and—full disclosure—of which your correspondent was a member), allegedly conspired to vault him into our land’s highest office.” Americans could not have actually voted Obama into office. Ultimately, Tomasky writes, the central question of Obama’s presidency is not about his citizenship, which has time and again been proven legitimate (see June 13, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008), and is further bolstered by the long-demanded release of his “long form” certificate (see April 27, 2011). “A conspiracy of immense proportions, concocted all the way back in 1961, had to be the only explanation for how this black man got to the White House,” Tomasky writes. “And if you think race isn’t what this is about at its core, ask yourself if there would even be a birther conspiracy if Barack Obama were white and named Bart Oberstar. If you think there would be, you are delusional.” Birther advocate Donald Trump, Tomasky writes, will crow about “forcing” the release of the ‘long form” certificate, and hardcore “birthers” will refuse to accept its validity, instead concocting another mare’s nest of conspiracy theories to “prove” its falsity (see April 27, 2011). While this may make the “birthers,” and the Republicans who continue to support them, “look sillier to a larger percentage of people,” Tomasky concludes, “the problems here are racial paranoia and the bald willingness of politicians to lie in order to stoke it.” [Guardian, 4/27/2011]

Chiyome Fukino, the former head of Hawaii’s Department of Health, who has verified that President Obama’s “short form” birth certificate is valid time and again (see October 30, 2008, July 28, 2009, and April 11, 2011), tells the press that months ago, Obama’s “long form” birth certificate was moved to a more secure location within a dual combination-key lock safe inside the state’s health department vault. The “long form” certificate is, by Hawaiian law, kept on file and not released to anyone, even the person whose certificate it is (see July 1, 2009); the Hawaiian government recently made an exception for Obama, who released the “long form” certificate to the public hours before Fukino’s announcement (see April 27, 2011). The certificate was moved to the vault in February 2011 by State Registrar Alvin Onaka in response to an overwhelming number of requests by media outlets and others to see it. “It is my understanding that the book has been placed in a smaller locked container in the same secure safe,” Fukino says. “The safe is still in the department.” She says that the additional security measure reduces the number of people with access to the much-sought-after document from a handful to just one: Onaka himself. Health Director Loretta J. Fuddy granted Obama permission to have two official copies of the “long form” certificate, an action Attorney General David Louie says “was done according to the letter of the law.” Until the Obama certificate release, Hawaii had not given anyone a copy of the “long form” certificate since converting to electronic records, a process that began in 1989 and ended in 2001. Fukino says that during her term as health director, Obama’s birth certificate was moved from a file vault, where bound books containing vital records line the shelves in handwritten, leather-bound ledgers, in colors chosen over the course of decades, and placed inside the vault’s five-foot-tall, grey, metal combination and key lock safe that holds money and other valuables. “After the 2008 elections, the Department of Health received a significant number of requests for a copy of President Obama’s original birth registration by individuals who believe that the president is not a US citizen,” Fukino says. “To assure the safety of the record, the bound volume was removed from the file vault and placed into a fireproof safe with limited access.” Fukino is one of the very few people to have viewed the “long form” certificate before it was released to public view. There are 35 volumes of 1961 birth certificates, each containing 500 certificates. Governor Neil Abercrombie says in a statement: “Considering all of the investigations that have been done and the information that has been provided, no rational person can question the president’s citizenship. We have found a way—once again—to confirm what we already knew: the president was born here in Hawaii. State officials of both parties have verified that President Obama’s birth records show that he was born in Honolulu. President Obama’s mother and father were dear friends of mine (see December 24, 2010), and we must respect their memory. It is an insult to the president, his parents, and to the Office to suggest that he was not born in Hawaii. The State of Hawaii has done everything within our legal ability to disabuse these conspiracy theorists. We granted the president’s request for certified copies of his birth certificate so we can all move on from this unfortunate distraction and focus on the real issues affecting people today.” [Fox News, 4/27/2011]

Brian Kilmeade of the Fox News morning talk show Fox and Friends suggests that President Obama released his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) to “play the victim card.” Kilmeade says Obama released the certificate to “build sympathy and empathy from the base and from some independents and say, ‘Well, listen, I’ve really been the subject of a vile campaign against me.’” Fox legal analyst Peter Johnson agrees, claiming, “I think the president’s premise for coming out is wrong, and I think it was done… as a distraction.” Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that for weeks, conservatives have demanded that Obama release the certificate (see March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, April 5, 2011, and April 24-25, 2011). [Media Matters, 4/28/2011]

A 1971 photograph of Barack Obama Sr. and Barack Obama Jr. [Source: Apex Newspix / London Daily Mail]The London Daily Mail uses information obtained by the Arizona Independent to attack President Obama’s father as a “serial womanizer” and “polygamist” whose eye for “white women” led to his expulsion from the United States. The article leads with the line, “With a father like this, it is little wonder President Obama did not want to release his full birth certificate” (see April 27, 2011). The Arizona Independent obtained files from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that imply US government and Harvard University officials, disapproving of Barack Obama Sr.‘s “licentious” ways, forced him to leave the United States. Obama Sr. married a white woman, Stanley Ann Dunham, who became Obama Jr.‘s mother, during a time when interracial marriages were still illegal in many parts of the US; moreover, Obama Sr. apparently had a wife in Kenya, making him in the eyes of some US officials a “polygamist.” Obama Sr., a student at Harvard University, “had an eye for the ladies,” according to the documents, and was warned by Harvard officials to “stay away from girls at the university.” Obama Sr.‘s application to extend his visa to remain in the US was eventually denied, in part because of his “polygamy” and, apparently, because of his predilection for dating white women. The file quotes an unnamed government official as calling Obama Sr. a “slippery character” who dated “several women.” Another immigration memo, from June 1964, records that Harvard officials were trying “to get rid of him” and “couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he had.” The memo, which notes that Obama Sr. and Dunham had a child, Barack Obama Jr., on August 4, 1961, goes on to say that Obama Sr. should be “closely questioned before another extension is granted—and denial be considered.” The INS officials also apparently requested that Harvard withdraw his scholarship to attend college there. The memo says: “Obama has passed his general exams, which indicates that on academic grounds he is entitled to stay around here and write his thesis; however [Harvard] are going to try to cook something up to ease him out.… They are planning on telling him that they will not give him any money, and that he had better return to Kenya and prepare his thesis at home.” Obama Sr. took classes at Harvard and at the University of Hawaii in 1960, where he met Dunham in a Russian language course. Dunham apparently knew nothing of Obama Sr.‘s wife and child in Kenya, and their divorce in 1963, when their child Barack Obama Jr. was just two, may have been triggered in part because of Obama Sr.‘s previous marriage as well as his reported philandering. Obama Jr. saw his father once after the divorce, in 1971; 11 years later, Obama Sr. was killed in a car accident. [Daily Mail, 4/28/2011] Hours after the story is published online, Fox Nation, the blog for Fox News, prints a summation of it and directs readers to it. [Fox Nation, 4/28/2011]

Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly denies there were ever any racial connotations to the “birther” controversy surrounding President Obama’s US citizenship. On his show The O’Reilly Factor, O’Reilly notes that many “defenders of Obama labeled the whole thing racist,” and plays clips from MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, CBS’s Bob Schieffer, The View’s Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg (see April 27, 2011), MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter, and BET host Tavis Smiley, many of them focusing on billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump and his pronouncements (see April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011). O’Reilly’s guests, Fox analyst Alicia Menendez and Republican strategist Margaret Hoover, join in denouncing what Hoover calls “the most predictable” reactions imaginable from “the entire left.” Hoover says that liberals always cry “racist” when they want to criticize conservatives. Hoover does admit that Trump’s claims that Obama got into Ivy League schools due to affirmative action, and the “widespread movement to delegitimize the president to say he’s not American enough (see April 27, 2011), I think it’s not unrelated to race.” O’Reilly disagrees, saying that questions about Obama’s college career are different from “calling him out because of his skin color.” Trump may be “stoking the discomfort that some people have with [Obama’s] skin color,” Hoover says, a remark that draws a snort of derision from O’Reilly, who says he knows Trump well and does not believe he is a racist. Menendez, described by an on-screen chyron as a member of a “center-left think tank,” agrees with Hoover that some of the comments and charges leveled by “birthers” may aggravate the racial tensions that exist in America today. O’Reilly cuts her off and says he does not see “any of these racial confrontations in this country, and I do this every day.” He demands proof of her contention. “I’m not saying it’s just about Barack Obama,” Menendez says, “I’m saying it’s generally about people trying to figure out what to do with this change in America.” Menendez says that there is “some intertwining” between the birther controversy and racist attitudes, but calls the comments by Schulz and others “very radical and obscure the conversation we should be having.” O’Reilly calls the charges of racism “vicious,” and presses for agreement from both Hoover and Menendez. Menendez attempts to qualify, calling the charges a response to “a vicious and hateful thing coming out of the right. And there were very few people like you who were being honest and calling it what it was.” O’Reilly says that the “bad behavior” from the right does not justify “bad behavior” from the left. He says the charges that “the birth certificate was phony” had no connection to racism at all, and continues to lambast “the left” for trying to tie racism into the controversy. Menendez asks if O’Reilly believes that “it was just coincidental” that Obama, the first African-American president, was targeted as not “being a real American” by right-wing opponents. “That’s just a weird coincidence,” she says. O’Reilly says the entire controversy was “borne out of hatred for the man.… The people who hate Barack Obama will latch on to anything. It’s not because of his skin color.” O’Reilly concludes that the “far left” did not act “in a responsible way” in challenging the controversy “as we did [presumably referring to his show]. We just took it apart” (see July 29, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/28/2011] An Associated Press analysis has found that the “birther” controversy was fueled in large part by racism (see April 27, 2011), and liberals (see April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 28, 2011, and April 28, 2011), moderates (see April 27, 2011), and conservatives (see April 27, 2011) alike have decried the racism at the heart of “birtherism.” Author John Avlon has said that “birthers” will never give up their conspiracy theories because even Republicans who disbelieve the claims and do not themselves harbor racist beliefs will not denounce the claims and the racism behind them (see April 28, 2011). Some conservative media outlets, including Fox News, are launching a new series of attacks on Obama through his father, vilifying the senior Obama because of his alleged “penchant” for “white women” (see April 28, 2011, April 29, 2011, and April 29, 2011). And conservative radio host Laura Ingraham says the release of the “long form” certificate “proves” Obama intends to make his re-election bid about race (see April 28, 2011).

Chris Matthews, hosting MSNBC’s Hardball, interviews columnists Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune and Eric Boehlert of the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters about the conservative reaction to the recent release of President Obama’s “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 28, 2011). Matthews focuses on a recent segment from Fox Business Channel featuring host Eric Bolling and his guest, conservative blogger Pamela Geller, where the two insisted that the newly released form is a fraud that has been “Photoshopped” (see April 27, 2011). Matthews calls their conspiracy theory “absolute garbage,” and Boehlert says Bolling “wants to prove he’s got the crazy niche” to replace the outgoing Glenn Beck on Fox News. Boehlert also notes that for weeks, Fox News hosts and guests have demanded that Obama release the “long form” certificate (see March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, April 5, 2011, and April 24-25, 2011), “and yesterday he does, and you turn on Fox News: ‘How dare he release his long form birth certificate!‘… This is a game that’s being played, a very dishonest, hateful, and very disturbing game that the right-wing media is playing with American politics.” Matthews then plays a brief clip from a recent MSNBC broadcast where “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz tried, and failed, to raise new questions about Obama’s Social Security number (see April 27, 2011); Boehlert says: “She’s moving the goalposts, obviously. Man, that’s what conspiracists do, I mean, this is the textbook example of what we saw yesterday. As you said, it wasn’t just the hard-core professionals like her. It was the right-wing media, it was AM talk radio, it was a lot of the Internet, and obviously it was Fox News. Nobody apologized, nobody conceded the fact, they just kept spinning and spinning.” Matthews plays a clip of Donald Trump questioning Obama’s acceptance into Columbia University and Harvard Law School (see April 26, 2011). Page says in response: “I’ll tell you how black folks feel about it, it sounds like he’s saying [Obama is] an affirmative action baby (see April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 28, 2011).… You haven’t gotta be a black American just to be proud of the fact that this fellow was able to work his way up and make it through Harvard and make it to the White House, and… Trump is just pouring cold water on that whole thing, and I think now he’s just embarrassing the whole [Republican] Party.” Matthews says the crux of Trump’s argument about Obama’s college acceptance hinges on the fact that Obama is African-American, and says Trump would never use such an argument against a white political opponent. Boehlert says Trump is another cog in the organized effort to delegitimize Obama as a president (see April 27, 2011). [Media Matters, 4/28/2011] Bolling will indeed replace Beck on Fox News, as the co-host of a roundtable discussion show entitled The Five. [Real Clear Politics, 6/30/2011]

Jonathan Martin and John F. Harris, writing for the online news outlet Politico, say that President Obama’s decision to present his “long form” birth certificate as proof of his US citizenship (see April 27, 2011) is a “decisive new turn in the centuries-long American history of political accusation and innuendo. By directly and coolly engaging a debate with his most fevered critics, Obama offered the most unmistakable validation ever to the idea that we are living in an era of public life with no referee—and no common understandings between fair and unfair, between relevant and trivial, or even between facts and fantasy.” The authors note that presidents have been pursued by “[l]urid conspiracy theories” for centuries. However, until now, those presidents have “benefited from a widespread consensus that some types of personal allegations had no place in public debate unless or until they received some imprimatur of legitimacy—from an official investigation, for instance, or from a detailed report by a major news organization.” That is no longer the case, they say (see April 27, 2011). Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says: “There are no more arbiters of truth. So whatever you can prove factually, somebody else can find something else and point to it with enough ferocity to get people to believe it. We’ve crossed some Rubicon into the unknown.” The writers note their difficulty in envisioning former President Clinton “coming out to the White House briefing room to present evidence showing why people who thought he helped plot the murder of aide Vincent Foster—never mind official rulings of suicide—were wrong” (see April 27, 2011), or former President George W. Bush giving a press conference denying allegations that “he knew about the Sept. 11 attacks ahead of time and chose to let them happen.” Obama’s choice to release the documentation and even to make a personal appearance to announce it are a powerful indication that the political dynamic has changed. Obama advisers explain that he made the decision to do so “because of the radical reordering of the political-media universe over the past 15 years, or so. The decline of traditional media and the rise of viral emails and partisan Web and cable TV platforms has meant the near-collapse of common facts, believed across the political spectrum.” Debunking the myth of Obama’s “foreign birth” means nothing to a large percentage of Americans who still remain unconvinced, or firmly believe the myth, the authors write. After trying to ignore it and mock it into irrelevance, they write, Obama “finally gave in and affirmed a new truth of politics in the Internet era: Nothing can be dismissed and anything that poses a political threat must be confronted directly.” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer says: “We’re dealing with a lot of the same things Clinton and frankly Bush dealt with, but we’re dealing with them at 1,000 times the speed and with fewer referees. That is the downside of the disaggregation of the media. If you don’t want to believe what someone is telling you, you can go somewhere else. If you believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that the president is not American, you can go somewhere to find somebody to validate that.” Another Obama adviser, who remains anonymous, adds: “Clinton never had to deal with a fully formed Internet. [Conservative Web gossip Matt] Drudge’s power was born out of the revelations of 1998. A fully automated cable TV universe with the Internet is something that [Clinton] never had to deal with.” Clinton’s press secretary Joe Lockhart says: “You’ve lost the ability to starve a story to death. So what you have to do is raise the price of those who are making the charges. If Donald Trump is out there saying this, you’ve got to make him pay a price for throwing a bomb before too much collateral damage is done.… You literally can’t laugh anything off. There’s nothing neutral in politics. It’s either helping you or hurting you. You’ve got to make sure it’s helping you or you’re going to lose.” The authors note that politicians are learning to use this phenomenon to their own advantage. While Washington Republicans often bemoan the ascendancy of “fringe” pundits like Fox News’s Glenn Beck, the authors write, “they relish the way Beck and ideological confederates excite the GOP base, a contributing factor in the party’s strong performance in 2010.” The authors also point to Democrats’ willingness to allow “liberal commentators” to push for the truth behind George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the National Guard. The authors claim that the Obama team “enjoys giving the stage to the GOP’s most divisive voices,” noting that Gibbs and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel often called conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh “the de facto leader of the Republican Party.” Obama, and his successors, will have to do things previous presidents have never considered, from appearing on less “serious” talk shows such as those hosted by Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman, or making appearances on networks such as the sports broadcaster ESPN. “It’s hard to see a president doing those things 10 or 20 years ago, but it’s become almost a requirement now,” Gibbs says. It is hard to know where to draw the line, Gibbs continues. “Does it become incumbent to prove everything wrong? You have to be very careful to not fall into that trap because you’ll spend all of your time and energy chasing your own tail.” Pfeiffer says most open-minded Americans will take the “long form” certificate as the evidence required to settle the issue: “There will be some segment of the population who will believe what they’re going to believe, regardless of anything else. But for the majority of the country, we have the capacity to correct the record and convince people of the truth. It’s not as easy as it used to be, but it’s possible.” Pfeiffer notes the “huge amount of time and energy” spent on dealing with the “birther” issue, time better spent, he says, on issues confronting the country. Former Bush administration political adviser Karl Rove says the Obama administration has attempted to use the “birther” controversy against Republicans: “The president himself has hoped Republicans would continue to talk about it, thereby damaging their own credibility. It was a useful diversion (see April 27, 2011). But take a look at recent polls. The problem was the view was taking hold among independents. He got worried it was about to spin out of control” (see April 27, 2011). Rove says Obama was attempting to “play rope-a-dope with Republicans,” a charge Pfeiffer denies (see April 28, 2011). “Up until a month ago, nobody really asked for the long form. It was fringe. It was a settled issue for 99 percent of the country.” Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer says: “It’s a terrible problem for the body politic. People like me who have been or are in the arena have an obligation to speak out against people in both parties who push untruths” (see January 25, 2001, January 25-27, 2001, and April 18, 2001). “The political discourse is much worse now, but that’s not always to the detriment of the so-called victim. In this case, President Obama came out looking better.” Lockhart agrees, saying: “Look at the rogue’s gallery of Clinton accusers. Most of them blew themselves up.” Lockhart acknowledges that for some, the issue will never be settled (see April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 28, 2011, and April 29, 2011). “They’ll probably ask for the first diaper. They’ll want to see the DNA.” [Politico, 4/28/2011]

Johann Hari, a commentator for the London Independent, pens a caustic column about the American “birther” conspiracy theory and Donald Trump, the billionaire entrepeneur and television host who has used the controversy to vault himself to the forefront of the Republican Party’s group of 2012 presidential contenders (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, April 14-15, 2011, April 21, 2011, April 21, 2011, April 22, 2011, April 24-25, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011). Hari says that Trump’s meteoric ascendancy within the Republican Party proves “that one of its central intellectual arguments was right all along. They have long claimed that evolution is a myth believed in only by whiny liberals—and it turns out they were onto something. Every six months, the Republican Party venerates a new hero, and each time it is somebody further back on the evolutionary scale.” Hari cites former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) and current US Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) as previous “stops” on the Republicans’ backwards slide, until the party got to Trump as its current representative. “A survey suggests he is the most popular candidate among Republican voters,” Hari writes. “It’s not hard to see why. Trump is every trend in Republican politics over the past 35 years taken to its logical conclusion. He is the Republican id, finally entirely unleashed from all restraint and all reality.” Hari lists four major trends that he says the modern Republican Party reflects, and that Trump epitomizes. 'Naked Imperialism' - Hari says Trump advocates what he calls the first trend of modern Republican ideology, “naked imperialism,” and cites Trump’s promise to, as president, simply “go in” to Libya “and take the oil.… I would take the oil and stop this baby stuff.” On Iraq, he has said: “We stay there, and we take the oil.… In the old days, when you have a war and you win, that nation’s yours.” Hari says that in Trump’s view, a view held by many Republicans, “the world is essentially America’s property, inconveniently inhabited by foreigners squatting over oil fields. Trump says America needs to ‘stop what’s going on in the world. The world is just destroying our country. These other countries are sapping our strength.’ The US must have full spectrum dominance.” 'Dog-Whistle Prejudice' - Along with his imperialism, Hari says, Trump has a penchant for what he calls “dog-whistle prejudice—pitched just high enough for frightened white Republicans to hear it.” Citing Trump’s support for the “birther” theory, Hari writes: “The Republican primary voters heard the message right—the black guy [President Obama] is foreign. He’s not one of us.” 'Raw Worship of Wealth' - The third trend that Hari says endears Trump to Republicans is his “raw worship of wealth as an end in itself—and [the exemption of the wealthy] from all social responsibility.” Republicans seem not to care that Trump, born into wealth, has bankrupted four businesses, repeatedly failed to pay his taxes, and, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Clay Johnson, has made the bulk of his fortune from “stiffing his creditors” and “from government subsidies and favours for his projects—which followed large donations to the campaigns of both parties, sometimes in the very same contest. Trump denies these charges and presents himself as an entrepreneur ‘of genius.’” However, Hari says Republicans seem to believe that “the accumulation of money is proof in itself of virtue, however it was acquired. The richest 1 percent pay for the party’s campaigns, and the party in turn serves their interests entirely.… In America today, a janitor can pay more income tax than Donald Trump—and the Republicans regard that not as a source of shame, but of pride.” Imposing America's Will on Reality - The fourth trend, Hari writes, “is to insist that any fact inconvenient to your world-view either doesn’t exist, or can be overcome by pure willpower.” He cites the example of the US’s imminent need to extend its debt ceiling in order to avoid default. While almost every economist in the world says the US going into default will trigger “another global economic crash,” Trump “snaps back: ‘What do economists know? Most of them aren’t very smart.’” Trump says “it’s so easy” to deal with the upward spiral of oil prices merely by calling a meeting of the leaders of the OPEC nations and, as he has said: “I’m going to look them in the eye and say: ‘Fellows, you’ve had your fun. Your fun is over.‘… It’s so easy. It’s all about the messenger.” He will stop China from manipulating its currency merely by ordering it to do so, and derides any mention of how much American debt China owns. Hari writes: “This is what the Republican core vote wants to be told. The writer Matthew Yglesias calls it ‘the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics.’ It’s named after the DC comics superhero the Green Lantern, who can only use his superpowers when he ‘overcomes fear’ and shows confidence—and then he can do anything. This is Trump’s view. The whiny world simply needs to be bullied into submission by a more assertive America—or the world can be fired and he’ll find a better one.” Expressing the Underlying Core Beliefs of the GOP - Trump will not get the Republican nomination, Hari believes, not because Republicans reject his premises, but “because he states these arguments too crudely for mass public consumption. He takes the underlying whispered dogmas of the Reagan, Bush, and Tea Party years and shrieks them through a megaphone. The nominee will share similar ideas, but express them more subtly.” Hari points to the budget proposal by US Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), one supported by every House Republican and most Senate Republicans, which would, among other things, halve taxes on America’s most wealthy, end corporate taxation, end taxation on dividends and inheritance, and pass that tax burden onto the middle class and poor by gutting spending on food stamps, healthcare for the poor and the elderly, and basic services. The Ryan budget would send the US deficit soaring, though Ryan, embracing the tenet of imposing his beliefs on reality, insists it would cut the deficit. Hari concludes: “The Republican Party today isn’t even dominated by market fundamentalism. This is a crude Nietzcheanism, dedicating to exalting the rich as an overclass and dismissing the rest.” [Independent, 4/28/2011]

The progressive media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, along with other media outlets, documents 30 years of racist issues surrounding billionaire celebrity Donald Trump (see April 14-15, 2011, April 22, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 28, 2011, and April 28, 2011), who is using “birther” allegations to vault himself into a preliminary front-runner position for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Trump has touted his racial sensitivity, often discussing the importance of the civil rights movement and writing about his dream of an America unencumbered by “racism, discrimination against women, or discrimination against people based on sexual orientation.” Trump once donated office space to Jesse Jackson’s civil rights group, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, once hosted an NAACP convention party, and likes to be seen in public with African-American celebrities such as P. Diddy and Lenny Kravitz. [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/6/2011]Justice Department Charges of Discrimination against Housing Applicants - In October 1973, Trump was still working with his father Fred Trump’s Trump Organization, which made millions from building thousands of units of middle-class housing in Brooklyn and Queens. Donald Trump had just been made president of the company. The Justice Department accused the Trump firm of serious violations of the Fair Housing Act, including refusing to rent or negotiate rentals “because of race and color,” misrepresenting to blacks that apartments were not available, and charging minorities higher rents. Donald Trump sued the federal government for making baseless charges, and accused the government of “trying to force [the firm] to rent to welfare recipients.” Trump added that if welfare recipients were allowed into his apartments in certain middle-class outer-borough neighborhoods, there would be a “massive fleeing from the city of not only our tenants, but communities as a whole.” A federal judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit, calling it a waste of “time and paper,” and Trump settled with the Justice Department, not admitting guilt but agreeing to a number of conditions that would open Trump housing to more nonwhites. In 1978, the government charged Trump with failing to adhere to the agreement, saying that the Trump company “discriminated against blacks in the terms and conditions of rental, made statements indicating discrimination based on race, and told blacks that apartments were not available for inspection and rental when, in fact, they are.” In 1983, many Trump developments still had 95 percent white occupancies. [Salon, 4/28/2011; Huffington Post, 4/29/2011]Called for Death Penalty for Blacks Accused of Rape - In 1989, Trump took out full-page ads calling for the death penalty for three African-American teenagers accused of raping a white jogger in Central Park. The three teenagers were later exonerated. One of the defendant’s lawyers, Colin Moore, compared Trump’s stance to the racist attitudes expressed in the 1930s during the infamous “Scottsboro Boys” case. Trump tried to mend relations by visiting a black woman who had been raped and thrown off the roof of a building in the hospital, promising to pay her medical expenses. Trump: Blacks 'Have the Actual Advantage Today' - Later in 1989, Trump told NBC interviewer Bryant Gumbel, “If I was starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black because I really do believe they have the actual advantage today.” Orlando Sentinel columnist David R. Porter responded: “Too bad Trump can’t get his wish. Then he’d see that being educated, black and over 21 isn’t the key to the Trump Tower. You see there’s still that little ugly problem of racism.” [Huffington Post, 4/29/2011]Trump: 'Laziness Is a Trait in Blacks' - John R. O’Donnell, the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino who in 1991 published a biography of Trump, wrote that Trump said “laziness is a trait in blacks,” and once exclaimed: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” In 1997, Trump admitted to a Playboy interviewer that “[t]he stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true,” and went on to call O’Donnell “a f_cking loser” whom Trump barely knew. [Huffington Post, 4/29/2011; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/6/2011]

In the aftermath of President Obama’s release of his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011), the number of people who say they believe that Obama was born in another country has dropped by half. The poll is conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International (PSRAI) of Princeton, New Jersey, on behalf of the Washington Post, between April 28 and May 1, 2011. Now, 70 percent of respondants say that Obama was born in Hawaii, up from 48 percent in April 2010. Eighty-six percent say he was born in the US, or call this their best guess. Only 10 percent say he was born in another country, down from 20 percent a year ago. Almost all of that 10 percent say it is only their “suspicion” that he was born elsewhere; only 1 percent claim “solid evidence” that he was born abroad, down from 9 percent a year ago. (In both the 2010 and 2011 surveys, 19 percent say they have “no opinion.”) Now, 14 percent of Republicans say Obama was born elsewhere, down from 31 percent in April 2010. Among the most conservative Republicans, the number drops from 35 percent last year to 16 percent this year. [Washington Post, 5/1/2011; Washington Post, 5/5/2011]

Pamela Geller, the conservative blogger who has for years attacked President Obama’s parentage and his citizenship (see July 20, 2008, October 24, 2008,August 4, 2009, and April 27, 2011), now calls Obama “a b_stard, literally and figuratively.” Geller’s characterization is part of a long tirade about Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., based on information about the elder Obama cited by the Arizona Independent, which obtained the Immigration and Naturalization Service file on Obama Sr. (see April 28, 2011). Geller accuses Obama’s father of “impossible philandering, multiple wives, and bad behavior,” says the elder Obama was forced to leave Harvard University and the United States itself, and blames his “polygamy” on his Muslim faith. She also says the portrait Obama has painted of his father in his first memoir, Dreams of My Father, is completely false, though Obama never knew his father and depicted his father in an unflattering light. Geller writes: “He was a terrible man—immoral and irresponsible. His treatment of women was incredibly callous and cruel—not to mention the abandoment of his children and his multiple wives. President Obama is indeed a bastard, literally and figuratively. What a horrible man. Dreams of My Father. Indeed. Perhaps this explains President Obama’s animus towards the United States” (see November 8, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 16, 2008, April 9, 2009, June 5, 2009, June 25, 2009, June 29, 2009, September 14, 2009, November 17, 2009, February 2, 2010, June 11, 2010, September 12, 2010, September 12, 2010 and After, September 12, 2010 and After, September 16, 2010, September 17, 2010, September 23, 2010, September 23-24, 2010, March 2011, April 15, 2011, and April 27, 2011). A New York Times analysis of the same information concludes that Obama Sr. had a tribal wife in Kenya at the time he married Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and explains: “We call this ‘polygamy’; they see it as moving on with life. First marriages fizzle out in Africa, as they do everywhere else. The difference is that culturally, legal divorce is very frowned upon: It’s viewed as shirking financial and familial responsibilities. Epidemiologists, who have studied this cultural pattern because of its impact on the spread of HIV, often say that Africans tend to have ‘concurrent’ relationships, while Americans have ‘consecutive’ ones. That’s a wild generalization, but the point is that Obama Sr. would not have viewed his first marriage back in Kenya as something disreputable. It clearly became worthy of investigation to school and immigration officials, though, after he started fooling around with white women.” Geller calls the hints of racism towards Obama Sr. ridiculous, and cites fellow conservative blogger Jack Cahill as providing “proof” that Obama Sr.‘s marriage to Dunham was possibly invalid, making Obama the “b_stard” that she accuses him of being. [Pamela Geller, 4/29/2011] The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that Geller’s attack on Obama and his father is part of a new initiative by “birthers” to besmirch Obama by attacking his father (see April 29, 2011). [Media Matters, 4/29/2011]

Software expert Jean-Claude Tremblay says there is no doubt President Obama’s “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011) is genuine. Tremblay is responding to recent claims that the “layers” found in the electronic version of the certificate “prove” it is fake (see April 27, 2011 and April 27, 2011). Many of the claimants have used a graphics program, Adobe Illustrator, to reveal the layers. Tremblay is a certified Adobe expert who teaches Illustrator. He tells Fox News, “You should not be so suspicious about this.” The layers are evidence of the use of ordinary scanning software, not evidence of forgery: “I have seen a lot of Illustrator documents that come from photos and contain those kind of clippings—and it looks exactly like this.” Whoever scanned the birth certificate into a PDF file did so using commonly used OCR (optical character recognition) software, which translates characters or words into text, and creates “layers” of text in the process. “When you open it in Illustrator it looks like layers, but it doesn’t look like someone built it from scratch,” Tremblay says. “If someone made a fake it wouldn’t look like this. Some scanning software is trying to separate the background and the text and splitting element into layers and parts of layers.… I know that you can scan a document from a scanner most of the time it will appear as one piece, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no software that’s doing this kind of stuff.… I’d be more afraid it’d be fake if it was one in piece. It would be harder to check if it’s a good one if it’s a fake.” [Fox News, 4/29/2011]

Washington Post Style columnist Anna Holmes, the founder of Jezebel (.com), lambasts billionaire television host, rumored presidential candidate, and “birther” enthusiast Donald Trump for exhibiting a pattern of sexism throughout his business and entertainment career. As her first example, she cites “the Trump rule,” which was described by conservative Miss USA winner Carrie Prejean in 2009. Trump owns the Miss USA beauty pageant and exercises a strong degree of control over it, including taking part in selecting contestants. Prejean wrote in her memoir that Trump required potential contestants to “parade” in front of him so he could sort them into two groups: those he found sexually appealing, and those he did not. Prejean wrote: “Many of the girls found this exercise humiliating. Some of the girls were sobbing backstage after [Trump] left, devastated to have failed even before the competition really began… even those of us who were among the chosen couldn’t feel very good about it—it was as though we had been stripped bare.” Holmes calls Prejean’s description “[s]trong stuff, made even more provocative considering it comes from a woman who made her career participating in events known for their focus on aesthetic appeal.” In early April 2011, New York Times columnist Gail Collins cited the example of a column she wrote chiding Trump, and his response—sending her a photograph of herself with his words “Face of a Dog!” scrawled across it (see April 1-8, 2011). Trump has asked the male contestants on his reality television series The Apprentice to rate their female counterparts based on appearance; in 2005, according to one female contestant, Trump told her, “I bet you make a great wife.” In 2007, he attacked actress Angelina Jolie by disparaging her sexual history, telling CNN host Larry King, “[S]he’s been with so many guys… I just don’t even find her attractive.” That same year, he inked a deal with Fox to develop a reality show called Lady or a Tramp? in which he would school “out-of-control young women” in what Holmes calls “the art of becoming modern-day Eliza Doolittles.” The show was never produced. In 2006, Trump attacked comedian Rosie O’Donnell, calling her a “big, fat pig” and an “animal” after she criticized him on the air. Trump once said of his daughter, Ivanka, “She does have a very nice figure… if [she] weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” Holmes writes that Trump’s recent reversal of his position on abortion—he now opposes it—is rooted in his sexism, though he knows little about the legal underpinnings of it; he recently demanded to know of an MSNBC interviewer what abortion law has to do with a woman’s right to privacy. In early 2011, Trump confidant Michael Cohen explained his boss’s change on abortion thusly: “People change their positions all the time, the way they change their wives.” Holmes concludes by citing Trump’s statement to an Esquire reporter in 1991, “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of [expletive].” [Washington Post, 4/29/2011]

The progressive news and opinion magazine Mother Jones examines what columnist Adam Weinstein calls an attempt by Fox News and conservative bloggers to besmirch President Obama by attacking his father, Barack Obama Sr. Since the “birther” controversy has been conclusively proven to be groundless, he writes (see April 27, 2011), “the anger stage has kicked in: Birtherism has given way to fear-of-a-virile-black-man-ism.” Weinstein cites a lead story on Fox Nation, the blog of Fox News, titled “‘A Slippery Character’: New Details Emerge About Obama’s Father” (see April 28, 2011). The story is a “hatchet job” based on a British tabloid report that uses a newly released Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) file to slander and besmirch Obama Sr. The article “confirm[s] what President Obama had already stated in his memoir: His dad wasn’t the greatest of guys,” Weinstein writes. “But it’s all in how the article conveys that message: ‘With a father like this, it is little wonder President Obama did not want to release his full birth certificate.’” Weinstein says the way the Fox Nation article paints Obama Sr. “has it all: polygamy, the suggestion of illicit interracial sex, and the predatory sexual appetites of a dark-skinned African man. In fact, this theme’s got a name, or a couple of names, in popular Western culture: ‘Black beast,’ ‘black buck,’ ‘Mandingo.’ It’s the theory that black males are more animal than human, with an insatiable predilection for defiling white (read: virtuous) women.” Weinstein quotes Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint as writing in 1972: “There is little doubt that our white countrymen have been in a chronic state of paranoid fear over black male sexual power. ‘N***er’ jokes and pornographic literature abound with stories testifying to the black male’s sexual appetites and attributes. The preoccupation is evident in much white folklore.” Fox and conservative bloggers piggybacking on the story (see April 29, 2011) are attempting to say that “we, the people, elected the offspring of an unholy union between a bestial sexual predator and an innocent Kansas girl… a union that’s proven by the existence of the birth certificate!” [Mother Jones, 4/29/2011]

A joke image displayed during President Obama’s address at the White House Correspondents Dinner, envisioning what the White House might look like if Donald Trump were to become president. The subheading on the photo reads ‘Hotel - Casino - Golf Course - Presidential Suite.’ [Source: C-SPAN]The annual White House Correspondents Dinner is the scene of a “roast” of birther advocate Donald Trump, who has for months called President Obama’s US citizenship into question, by Obama. The dinner is traditionally a venue where politicians, journalists, and pundits have fun at one another’s expense. [Daily Beast, 5/1/2011] After the dinner, the New York Times reports that Obama “zings” Trump during his presentation. [New York Times, 4/30/2011]Obama Zings Trump, 'Birther' Controversy - Obama begins his presentation by noting that he has recently released the “long form” version of his birth certificate (see April 27, 2011), which has quieted some (but not all) critics. Obama presents what he calls his “official birth video” to “put all doubts to rest,” and shows a clip from the Disney animated film The Lion King depicting the triumphant birth of the lion Simba. He then says, to repeated bursts of laughter: “I want to make clear to the Fox News table: That was a joke. That was not my real birth video. That was a children’s cartoon. Call Disney if you don’t believe me. They have the original long-form version.” He mentions US Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), another “birther” (see April 20, 2011) who is “thinking about running for president, which is weird because I hear she was born in Canada.” After the laughter subsides, he says: “Yes, Michele, this is how it starts. Just letting you know.” [White House, 5/1/2011; Daily Beast, 5/1/2011] (Bachmann, as Obama and others in the room are well aware, was born in Iowa.) [Des Moines Register, 10/20/2009] Obama then turns his attention to Trump, who like Bachmann is in attendance. “Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately,” Obama says, “but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter—like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?” Obama is referring to a triad of popular conspiracy theories that assert the various Apollo moon landings were faked in California sound studios; Roswell, New Mexico, was the site of an alien landing in the 1950s; and rap stars “Biggie” Smalls and Tupac Shakur were not murdered, but are alive and in hiding. Obama continues to address Trump, citing the NBC show Celebrity Apprentice, which Trump hosts: “But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example—no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’—at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf [two celebrity contestants on the show]. You fired [contestant] Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled.” The audience roars with laughter, while Trump attempts to smile, but glowers and looks uncomfortable. Obama finishes his joshing at Trump’s expense with displaying an image of what the White House might look like if Trump were to become president, drawing a huge round of laughter. He concludes the lighter portion of his presentation by showing a video of him being forced to give speeches without a teleprompter, which includes a number of presidential “bloopers” from earlier speeches. Praises Soldiers, Storm Survivors, Journalists - Obama closes his presentation on a serious note, lauding the American servicemen and servicewomen “who are serving in uniform overseas in the most extraordinary of circumstances,” noting the terrible devastation suffered by people in Alabama and other Southern states who were hit by multiple tornadoes and powerful storms, and praising the journalists who cover such difficult stories: “You know, in the last months, we’ve seen journalists threatened, arrested, beaten, attacked, and in some cases even killed simply for doing their best to bring us the story, to give people a voice, and to hold leaders accountable. And through it all, we’ve seen daring men and women risk their lives for the simple idea that no one should be silenced, and everyone deserves to know the truth. That’s what you do. At your best that’s what journalism is. That’s the principle that you uphold. It is always important, but it’s especially important in times of challenge, like the moment that America and the world is facing now. So I thank you for your service and the contributions that you make. And I want to close by recognizing not only your service, but also to remember those that have been lost as a consequence of the extraordinary reporting that they’ve done over recent weeks. They help, too, to defend our freedoms and allow democracy to flourish. God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.” [New York Times, 4/30/2011; White House, 5/1/2011; Daily Beast, 5/1/2011] The other featured presenter is Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers, who spends some time mocking Obama, other White House members, and some of the journalists in attendance, but spends most of his time making fun of Trump. “Donald Trump has been saying that he’ll run for president as a Republican—which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke,” he opens, drawing a wave of laughter. One of his most popular laugh lines is: “Donald Trump said recently he has ‘a great relationship with the blacks’ (see April 14-15, 2011. But unless the Blacks are a family of white people, I bet he’s mistaken.” Even Obama dissolves in laughter at this line. [Daily Beast, 5/1/2011; Daily Beast, 5/1/2011] By the time the presentation is over, Trump is, in the words of the New York Times, sitting “grimly unsmiling” and “grimacing” through the mockery. Trump is so visibly upset that the others at his table stop smiling and laughing; a reporter from New York magazine, citing guests sitting near Trump’s table, writes that his “mood shifted from playing along to unvarnished anger.” [New York Times, 4/30/2011; TPM Muckraker, 5/1/2011]Former Democratic Governor: Trump's 'Bubble Has Burst' - Veteran correspondent Lloyd Grove, writing for the online news outlet The Daily Beast, writes that Obama, “in a manner of speaking, deftly slit [Trump’s] throat, cut out his entrails, set him ablaze, and scraped what was left off the presidential shoe.” Before Obama’s presentation, Trump seemed to be enjoying himself at the dinner, “[b]ut after Obama finished with him—and the evening’s paid entertainer, [Meyers], stomped on the remains—a scowling Trump and his frowning model-wife bolted out of their chairs in the basement ballroom, pushed their way toward the exit with their security team, and disappeared into the cruel Washington night.” CNN host and former Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) says, apparently referring to Trump’s presidential aspirations: “That was very serious. I think that bubble has burst.” [Daily Beast, 5/1/2011] Trump says of Obama’s presentation, “It was very good,” but calls Meyers “a stutterer.” [TPM Muckraker, 5/1/2011]

Eric Bolling, the host of the Fox Business Channel talk show Follow The Money, reads a list of people his viewers say they want waterboarded. The list includes President Obama. Bolling is doing a segment on his viewers’ reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden (see May 2, 2011), and insists, despite claims from Obama administration members and informed outsiders, that bin Laden was located “through waterboarding, simple as that” (see Autumn 2003, August 6, 2007, December 2-4, 2008, December 11, 2008, and March 29, 2009). (Later in the segment, some of his guests dispute that claim.) Bolling says he asked viewers who they wanted to see waterboarded. The respondents, through Facebook, named, among others: “Senate Dems… and then Obama… then the kooks on [the ABC morning talk show] ‘The View,’ starting with Joy” Behar; “Alan Colmes… [t]he secrets of the left-wing cabal will come pouring out of that boy”; “[m]y ex-wife!”; progressive talk show hosts Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow; and the far-right, virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. Bolling concludes the segment with some jocularity with his guests, and jokingly offers to be waterboarded himself. [Media Matters, 5/5/2011]

The John Birch Society booth displays a banner at the ‘Freedom Rally’ before the debate. [Source: Think Progress]Several prospective contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 participate in a debate in Greenville, South Carolina. The debate is presaged by a “Freedom Rally,” co-sponsored by local tea party groups, the local chapter of the far-right, implicitly racist John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), and a far-right militia organization, the Oath Keepers (see March 9, 2009). The rally features speakers such as Judge Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who lost his job after refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building, and Governor Nikki Haley (R-SC). “The change we’ve done in South Carolina can be done across the country,” Haley tells a crowd of some 200 members. “We need to change the person in the White House.” Other speakers talk about issues such as defending traditional marriage and making gold and silver legal tender in South Carolina. The JBS has been considered so extreme that until 2010, mainstream Republicans refused to countenance its involvement in their political events and campaigns (see April 19, 2010). Former Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), former Governor Gary Johnson (R-NM), and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain take part in the debate. Paul and Johnson are libertarians; during the debate, Paul argues for the legalization of heroin, Johnson calls for the legalization of marijuana, and both call for the US to end its military involvement in Afghanistan. [Fox News, 5/5/2011; Think Progress, 5/5/2011; Washington Post, 5/5/2011] Many credit Paul with bringing the JBS back into “favor” with the Republican Party (see July 22, 2007 and August 4, 2008). Fox News host Glenn Beck has also praised the JBS in his broadcasts (see November 9-11, 2010 and After).

A crane begins removing an American flag from the ‘Ground Zero’ site of the former World Trade Center. [Source: Jake Tapper / TwitPic]At 6:30 p.m., ABC News reporter Jake Tapper posts a comment on Twitter that says, “One minute to air and they decided to take the flag down from the live shot!” He attaches a photograph to his post that shows a crane removing a large American flag from where it had been hung as a backdrop for President Obama’s speech and wreath-laying ceremony earlier in the day. Several conservative bloggers take Tapper’s post to mean that Obama had the flag removed before his speech, and lambast Obama for being unpatriotic. [Media Matters, 5/6/2011] Drudge Report posts a link to Tapper’s photo with the headline: “REPORT: Team Obama takes down US flag before Ground Zero event…” [Drudge Report Archives, 5/6/2011] Doug Ross writes, “This administration and, by extension, the Democrat Party are now so thoroughly divorced from the history, traditions, and morals of America that we might as well admit the Marxist left has executed a successful coup d’etat on this Republic.” Later, Ross acknowledges that he and other bloggers were “confused” by Tapper’s initial post, but adds, “I’m sticking by my ‘Marxist coup d’etat’ comment.” He adds a second “update” calling “leftists” “idiots” and accusing Obama of “on-again/off-again flag-pin patriotism” and “well-documented failures to show respect to the flag” (see November 8, 2007) that he says “make it clear that Tapper’s tweet would be utterly believable in the original context.” [Doug Ross, 5/6/2011] Michelle Malkin initially “retweets” Tapper’s post with a “What the…?” comment. Later, she acknowledges misunderstanding Tapper’s post and writes: “Many, including me, jumped to the conclusion that the stage managers at the White House had the flag removed. It’s not true.… Tapper tweeted the photo at the end of the day yesterday after the Ground Zero event and the flag was visible during the ceremony. I stand corrected and apologize for the error.” [Michelle Malkin, 5/6/2011] Malkin had previously posted the question, “Does flying the American flag at Ground Zero now constitute ‘spiking the football???’” in reference to Obama’s statement that he would not rhetorically “spike the football” by releasing photographs of the dead Osama bin Laden (see May 2, 2011). [Fire Andrea Mitchell (.com), 5/6/2011] The blog Weasel Zippers creates a post with the following headline: “Wow: Team Obama Removes American Flag From Ground Zero Moments Before Live Shoot…” and later removes the post entirely. [Media Matters, 5/6/2011] A blogger at Fire Andrea Mitchell writes: “What an absolutely pitiful little manchild Obama is.… Now we learn that the Obama regime had an American flag removed from the live shot of his photo op at Ground Zero today.” The blogger later posts an apology of sorts: “Unlike the far left loons and progressive politicians, when I’m wrong i [sic] can admit it. Turns out that the Obama regime DIDN’T order the flag removed. Tapper tweet was sent AFTER the Ground Zero photo op/services (if I would have bothered checking the time stamp). Therefore they were taking the flag down because it was the end of the day. My mistake, I admit it. Now I’d love to see some of the left wing loons who have flooded this site to post their apologizes for all the ‘errors’ they post. I wouldn’t hold my breath though.” [Fire Andrea Mitchell (.com), 5/6/2011]

Former Army Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin is discharged from military prison after serving five months of a six-month term for refusing to obey deployment orders. Lakin refused to be deployed in April 2010 because, he said at the time, President Obama was not a true American citizen and therefore could not give him or any other member of the military any orders to deploy (see Before April 13, 2010). Lakin was court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and sentenced to prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (see December 16, 2010). He pled guilty after a military court refused to allow what he and the “birther” organization that supported him, the American Patriot Foundation, called “evidence” of Obama’s lack of US citizenship (see September 2, 2010). [Associated Press, 5/13/2011] Some “birthers” continue to use Lakin’s case to advance their cause. One “birther” blog devoted to advocating the anti-gay “Defense of Marriage Act” writes: “Lieutenant Terry Lakin was sentenced as a result of a judicial meltdown in our courts transpiring and sweeping across America, as Mr. Lakin was not allowed the right to justly defend himself. He was denied the opportunity to call forth witnesses or to submit crucial evidence to the court involving our Head-in-Chief.” [DOMA News, 5/15/2011] A commenter on the Free Republic blog writes: “When did overlooking and ignoring fraud, deceit, identity theft, forgery, and corruption in the chain of command become part of the military code of honor? Is this how our very highest military officers fulfill their responsibilities to the brave men and women serving under them and to their oath to defend the Constitution. [sic] Do they feel shame when accepting the salutes of our dedicated and honorable troops? Are our highest military [sic] the least bit suspicious that Obama sits in the White House because of forgery, deceit, fraud, and identity theft? Where is the evidence that they peacefully and lawfully sought certifiable clarification of Obama’s status from Congress, the courts, and/or Obama himself?” [Free Republic (.com), 5/12/2011]

Four of Fox News’s presumptive presidential candidates. Clockwise from upper left: Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee. [Source: Huffington Post]New York Magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman profiles Fox News chairman Roger Ailes (see October 7, 1996), who also serves as a Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988). According to close friends and advisers to Ailes interviewed by Sherman, Ailes wants far more than the continued ratings and advertiser success of Fox News—he wants the network to steer one of its own into the White House in 2012 (see October 2008). He is tremendously influential; a Republican strategist tells Sherman: “You can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger. Every single candidate has consulted with Roger.” Letdown? - Ailes has been keenly disappointed in the results of his network’s official and unofficial candidates so far. Former Alaska governor and Fox commentator Sarah Palin (see September 15-16, 2010), who has not yet announced her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, is polling at around 12 percent among Republican voters. Official presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, and Rick Santorum, a former senator, who both are commentators for Fox, have even lower numbers, at 10 percent and 2 percent respectively. Ailes has asked Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ), who is not a Fox employee, to run; until recently, Fox News was enthusiastically promoting the putative presidential run of billionaire “birther” Donald Trump (see March 17, 2011). Ailes has envisioned General David Petraeus as a potential candidate, but Petraeus has instead accepted the post of CIA director. “He thinks things are going in a bad direction,” says a Republican close to Ailes. “Roger is worried about the future of the country. He thinks the election of [President] Obama is a disaster.” None of the current crop of candidates meets Ailes’s expectations. Ailes is particularly disappointed in Palin; according to the same Republican, Ailes considers her “an idiot”: “He thinks she’s stupid. He helped boost her up. People like Sarah Palin haven’t elevated the conservative movement.” After Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in January 2011, and other media outlets focused on Palin’s use of gunsight graphics to “target” Giffords and other vulnerable Democrats in the 2010 election (see March 24, 2010), according to Sherman, “Ailes recognized that a Fox brand defined by Palin could be politically vulnerable.” After the Giffords shooting, Ailes told an interviewer, “I told all of our guys, ‘Shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually.’” Ailes was infuriated when Palin refused his advice to remain quiet until after the memorial service, and accused her critics of committing “blood libel,” a phrase often seen as anti-Semitic. The problem with Palin was further exacerbated when she argued about the amount of work Fox expects her to do: she does not want to host special broadcasts or other tasks the network expects of her. In March 2011, Fox suspended the contracts of Gingrich and Santorum so they could run their campaigns without legal or ethical entanglements. Shortly thereafter, Huckabee chose to remain at Fox and abandon his plans for a primary challenge. The network is still waiting for Palin’s decision whether to run for president. Creation of the Tea Party - While Ailes and Fox News did not directly create the “tea party” “grassroots” movement, Ailes was involved in its creation and promotion from its outset (see February 19, 2009, February 27, 2009, and April 15, 2009). Ailes has always been somewhat leery of having Fox News too closely associated with the burgeoning movement (see March 13, 2009 and After, March 23-24, 2009, April 2, 2009, April 6-7, 2009, April 6-13, 2009, April 8, 2009, April 13-15, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 16, 2009, May 13-14, 2009, July 28, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 28, 2009, September 12, 2009, and September 12, 2010), and at one point banned Fox News host Sean Hannity from hosting a tea party rally. However, according to Sal Russo, a former Reagan aide and the founder of the national Tea Party Express tour, “There would not have been a tea party without Fox.” Fox News has promoted a number of successful “tea party” candidates (see May 14, 2008 - February 2010), including former host John Kasich (see March 27, 2008 - June 1, 2009 and After), who won the Ohio gubernatorial election in 2010. Before that election, Gingrich, still a Fox News commentator at the time, said that he was confident the “tea party” would evolve into “the militant wing of the Republican Party” (see April 21, 2010). Ailes used some of the same “astroturf” tactics (see February 27, 2009 and April 14, 2009) in developing the “tea party” as he did when he represented tobacco companies such as R.J. Reynolds, creating phony, seemingly independent “front” groups to push the “tea party” messages in the media. [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011]

Fox Business Channel host Eric Bolling uses a racial smear to characterize President Obama’s visit to Ireland and other European countries. Obama left for Europe shortly after a number of tornadoes caused heavy damage in parts of Missouri. On his Twitter account, Bolling says “Obama chugging 40s in IRE while tornadoes ravage MO.” He repeats the smear on his television show Follow the Money a few hours later. [Media Matters, 5/23/2011; Media Matters, 5/24/2011; Media Matters, 2/16/2012] The progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters notes that Missouri authorities have praised the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for their quick and effective response to the tornadoes. [Media Matters, 5/24/2011] The progressive news site Think Progress notes that Bolling’s reference to Obama “chugging 40s” is inaccurate and racially motivated. Obama was photographed drinking Guiness from a glass in an Irish pub. More importantly, Bolling’s reference is to malt liquor, usually sold in the US in 40-ounce bottles or cans. Think Progress reporter Alex Seitz-Wald writes: “Throughout the late 80s and 90s, 40 oz malt liquor was rolled out with ‘aggressive marketing campaigns aimed at minority drinkers,’ which often portrayed black actors and rappers in stereotypical or exploitative fashions. There is a fairly large body of academic literature exploring the relationship between malt liquor and African Americans.… Hip hop culture has appropriated malt liquor, with numerous songs with ‘40 oz’ in the title. ‘Rap artists have been popular images in malt liquor advertising and ‘gangsta’ rap performers portray malt liquor as a sign of masculinity,’” according to a 2005 study. Bolling is apparently trying to associate Obama with African-American street gang and rap culture. He is also apparently trying to portray Obama as having a drinking problem, a characterization with no evidence to back it. [Think Progress, 5/24/2011] After facing a barrage of criticism over his racially inflammatory remarks, Bolling attempts to clarify his remarks, saying he intended no racial connotations and merely attempted to imply that Obama is a drunkard. “I took some heat for saying Obama should have delayed his bar crawl, or whatever he’s doing over there,” he tells a Fox Business Channel audience. Media Matters observes: “That, of course, is not what he said. And Bolling did not explain why he thinks it’s OK to call Obama a binge drinker.” [Media Matters, 5/24/2011; Media Matters, 5/25/2011]

MSNBC talk show host Ed Schultz calls right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut” on his radio broadcast. He issues an emotional apology shortly thereafter and is voluntarily suspended from MSNBC for a week. Schultz is discussing the recent spate of tornadoes in Missouri, and the criticisms of President Obama’s response to the tornadoes from some conservatives such as Ingraham. He says to his listeners: “President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday but you know what they’re talking about, like this right-wing slut, what’s her name? Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama’s doing it, they’re working him over.” The next day, Schultz delivers a seven-minute apology on his MSNBC show and then leaves the air, replaced by MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts. Schultz says in part: “On my radio show yesterday I used vile and inappropriate language when talking about talk show host Laura Ingraham. I am deeply sorry and I apologize. It was wrong, uncalled for, and I recognize the severity of what I said. I apologize to you, Laura, and ask for your forgiveness. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were. It doesn’t matter that it was on radio and I was ad-libbing. None of that matters. None of that matters. What matters is what I said was terribly vile and not of the standards that I or any other person should adhere to. I want all of you to know tonight that I did call Laura Ingraham today and did not make contact with her and I will apologize to her as I did in the message that I left her today. I also met with management here at MSNBC, and understanding the severity of the situation and what I said on the radio and how it reflected terribly on this company, I have offered to take myself off the air for an indefinite period of time with no pay. I want to apologize to Laura Ingraham. I want to apologize to my family, my wife. I have embarrassed my family. I have embarrassed this company.… This is the lowest of low for me.… I stand before you tonight to take full responsibility for what I said and how I said it, and I am deeply sorry.… In this moment, I have failed. And I want you to know that I talked to my sons especially about character and about dignity and about the truth. And I tell you the truth tonight that I am deeply sorry and I tell them every day that they have to live up to standards if they want to be a successful human being in life. And I have let them down. I have never been in this position before to the point where it has affected so many people. And I know that I have let a lot of people down. To the staff here at MSNBC, I apologize for embarrassing the company and the only way that I can really make restitution for you is to give you a guarantee, and the only way that I can prove my sincerity in all of this is if I never use those words again. Tonight, you have my word that I won’t. Laura Ingraham, I am sorry. Very sorry. I’ll be back with you in the coming days.” Ingraham posts on Twitter that she accepts Schultz’s apology. Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher writes: “Schultz’s apology was as full and heartfelt as any I have ever seen from a media figure (as it should have been).… More than anything, Schultz seemed to grasp the gravity of what he had said, and his shame and embarrassment were palpable as he asked Ingraham for forgiveness.” [TPMDC, 5/25/2011; Mediaite, 5/25/2011; ABC News, 3/5/2012]

Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), joining the race to contend for the Republican presidential nomination, tells an audience at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington that America was a much better place before 1965, when the Voting Rights Act (VRA—see August 6, 1965 and June 29, 1989) was enacted and the “welfare state” began. “Social conservatives understand that America was a great country because it was founded great,” Santorum says. “Our founders, calling upon in the Declaration of Independence, the supreme judge, calling upon divine providence, said what was at the heart of American exceptionalism.… ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.‘… Ladies and gentlemen, America was a great country before 1965.” Reporter David Love notes that in 1965, institutionalized racism was still the law in many areas of the country. Police brutalized voting rights protesters and civil rights workers were murdered without legal repercussions. The civil rights legislation enacted during this time began the variety of federal “safety net” programs such as food stamps, aid for mothers and their children, disabled citizens, and others, and also began stamping out institutionalized, legal racism. Medicare and Medicaid were enacted under the Social Security Act of 1965. The 1965 Omnibus Housing Act provided funds for building housing for indigent Americans, including many African-Americans. The federal government began funding public schools in 1965. And two years later, the courts used 1965 legislation to overturn laws against miscegenation—interracial marriage. Love concludes: “So the question remains, was America better before 1965? Well, it depends on your point of view. If you are a conservative who views the Great Society legacy as a big government intrusion into the lives of people, then the answer is yes. If you think government has no business protecting civil rights, funding schools and feeding hungry children, increasing economic opportunity, and promoting the arts, your answer will undoubtedly be yes. However, if you are an African-American who enjoys exercising the right to vote, or a senior who doesn’t want anyone touching your Medicare, or someone who believes the federal government has a role to play in fighting poverty, chances are you have a different view of things.” [The Grio, 6/7/2011]

’White Only’ sign posted on Ohio landlord Jamie Hein’s swimming pool. [Source: Ohio Civil Rights Commission / ABC News]Cincinnati, Ohio, landlord Jamie Hein is accused of discriminating against an African-American girl by putting a “white only” sign on the fence surrounding her swimming pool. Hein explains that the sign is an antique, intended only as a decoration, and she is “stick[ing] up for my white rights.” Hein’s sign reads: “Public Swimming Pool. White Only.” It is dated 1931 and is from Alabama. Hein says she collects antiques and was given the sign as a gift. She also says that even though the sign says the pool is public, her pool is on her property and “everybody has to ask before getting in my pool.” Michael Gunn has filed a complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission against Hein. A tenant in one of Hein’s properties, Gunn explains: “We invited my daughter, who is African-American, to visit and swim in the pool for [a] Memorial Day weekend [party]. The owner, Jamie Hein, accused my daughter of making the pool ‘cloudy’ because she used chemicals in her hair. Days later, she posted a sign on the gate to the pool which reads, ‘Public Swimming Pool, White Only.’” Hein denies that she put the sign up in response to Gunn’s daughter, and says it was already in place when she opened her pool for the party, but when the gate is open, the sign cannot be easily seen. Gunn says that his family previously “had unrestricted access to the pool area,” but Hein denies this, saying that everyone must ask permission before swimming in her pool. Gunn says that after the incident, he moved out of the property “in order to not expose my daughter to the sign and the humiliation of the message.” On September 29, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission finds that Hein did violate the Ohio Civil Rights Act by posting the sign, but she files a request for the decision to be reconsidered. After that, the sign is stolen. Hein, who says she has no problem with anyone’s race, tells a reporter: “I’ve never said anything to that child. If I have to stick up for my white rights, I have to stick up for my white rights. It goes both ways.” The commission finds that the posting of such a sign “restricts the social interaction between Caucasians and African-Americans and reinforces discriminatory actions aimed at oppressing people of color.” If Hein loses her request for reconsideration, the case will be referred to the Ohio attorney general and charges could be filed against Hein. [Associated Press, 12/13/2011; ABC News, 12/15/2011; United Press International, 12/15/2011] In January 2012, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission will unanimously vote not to reconsider its ruling, without discussing the issue. [The Blaze, 1/12/2012; New York Daily News, 1/12/2012]

Gabon President Ali Bongo (L) and US President Barack Obama labeled as ‘hoods’ by Fox Business Channel. [Source: Media Matters]Fox Business Channel host Eric Bolling uses a number of racially charged characterizations in his report on a visit by an African head of state to the White House. Bolling, hosting a segment on President Ali Bongo of Gabon’s visit with President Obama, titles the segment “Hoods in the House,” and puts the title on screen under footage of Obama sitting with Bongo in a White House meeting room. Bolling introduces the segment by saying: “Guess who’s coming to dinner? A dictator. Mr. Obama shares a laugh with one of Africa’s kleptocrats. It’s not the first time he’s had a hoodlum in the hizzouse.” Apparently Bolling is calling both Obama and Bongo “hoods,” slang often used for African-American street criminals. “Hizzouse,” a term Bolling uses for the White House, is slang for a crack house or a house used by African-American street gangs. Bolling begins the segment by saying: “So what’s with all the hoods in the hizzy? A month after the White House hosted the rapper Common, who glorifies violence on cops, the president opened his doors to one of Africa’s most evil dictators. Here’s Ali Bongo, the Gabonese president, who’s been accused of human rights violations and plundering billions of his country’s dollars.” When Bolling says that Obama has previously hosted “a hoodlum in the hizzouse,” he shows footage of Common. Progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters will explain that Fox News viewers may recognize Common as the target of a recent smear by Fox News and other conservative media outlets, which marked the instance of his visit to the White House by falsely accusing him of being a “cop killer rapper.” Later in the segment, Bolling says of Bongo: “Smile for the birdie. Our president’s sitting with one of Africa’s most wanted. It’s not the first time he’s had a hood in the big crib.” “Big crib” is more slang for houses used by street gangs. When Bolling says “Smile for the birdie,” he shows an image of Bongo with a lighting effect—a flashing tooth, an apparent reference to some African-American rappers’ preference for gold inserts in their teeth. Media Matters notes, “For the record, it is true that Gabon and Bongo have a troubling human rights record, and Obama pressured Bongo on the issue during their meeting.” During the segment, Bolling’s guest, Human Events editor Jason Mattera, says that “Barack Obama likes to defecate on American allies.” And another of Bolling’s guests, Fox Business reporter Sandra Smith, accuses Obama of preferring to “entertain” America’s enemies in the White House over the nation’s allies. “Do we really have to have them in the White Hizzy?” she asks. [Media Matters, 6/11/2011; Media Matters, 2/16/2012]

A group of tea party-affiliated organizations, including the lobbying group Americans for Prosperity (see Late 2004), the Tea Party Patriots, the Heritage Foundation, the Buckeye Foundation, American Majority, and the far-right, extremst John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), hosts a two-day event called the “We the People Convention.” The event is designed to help raise money and awareness for Republican political candidates, in part through the auspices of the Ohio Citizens PAC. Some 88 area tea party groups in the Ohio Liberty Council are the local sponsors; the attendance is estimated at around 300 people. According to the organization’s Web site, “The purpose of the convention is to provide educational programs that will help all citizens participate in self governance as provided by the US and Ohio Constitutions by participating in the governance of their township, village, municipality, state, and country.” The convention includes “breakout sessions” that give information on “start[ing] your own Patriot group in your home town, or strengthen[ing] your existing group.” According to a report by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights’s Devin Burghart, the workshops advocate the dismantling of public education, Social Security, and Medicaid; the banning of labor unions; and voter suppression efforts against non-white voters. Burghart writes, “A hard look at this conference provides an invaluable window on the way the tea party movement works against even the most minimal efforts to promote the common good.” Many of the workshop presenters engage in what Burghart calls overtly racist jargon, including accusations that blacks who receive government assistance “have no souls” and President Obama is “not American.” Global warming is a fraud perpetuated by socialists to obtain control over private enterprise, one workshop asserts, with global warming advocates being compared to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Another hosted by John McManus of the JBS claims that the Federal Reserve system is a Communist front group, and calls for a return to a gold- and silver-based monetary system. McManus also leads workshops that claim American Democrats are colluding with American neoconservatives to build a “one-world government,” a “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) that would oppress whites and institute “global socialism.” Matt Spaulding of the Heritage Foundation tells listeners that they are the current equivalent of the Revolutionary War-era patriots, and the enemies of America are the “elites” and “progressive liberals” who intend to subvert American democracy. Progressive liberalism, Spaulding says, is an outgrowth of German Nazism. He cites what he calls “Obamacare,” the 2009 health care legislation bitterly opposed by many tea party groups, as an example of the Obama administration’s drive to “socialize” America and undermine constitutional law. At the welcoming ceremony, tea party spokesman Tom Zawistowski, the incoming president of the Ohio Liberty Council, tells the audience that the Obama administration is a “professional army” of socialists intent on overthrowing the Constitution. Zawistowski tells the assemblage that only they, the heirs and successors to American Revolutionary War figures such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, can stop Obama and the “liberal agenda” from destroying America as it currently exists. Vendors sell anti-Obama literature and bumper stickers, along with information on how to purchase weapons engraved with “We the People Convention” and selected phrases from the US Constitution. “[W]e do not hate Obama because he is black,” he says, “we hate him because he is a socialist, fascist, and not American.” While Zawistowski claims that tea parties have no affiliation with Republican politicians, Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots hosts a luncheon where she cautions listeners to avoid voting for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and instead consider voting for another Republican, Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN). [We the People Convention, 7/2011; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 9/16/2011]

Two members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Elston McCowan and Perry Molens, are found not guilty of assaulting tea party activist Kenneth Gladney. Gladney claimed he had been beaten by McCowan, Molens, and perhaps others during a contentious town hall forum in St. Louis two years ago (see August 6-8, 2009); Gladney, who was not injured during the momentary altercation between himself and union representatives at the forum, went on Fox News and other media venues in a wheelchair after the incident, claiming to have been badly beaten and asking for donations (see August 8, 2009). McCowan and Molens were charged with assault and interfering with police. The interference charges were later dropped. If convicted, the two could have faced up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine. The jury deliberated for about 40 minutes before declaring both men innocent. Asked why Gladney lost, Molens, referring to both Gladney and his tea party backers, says, “They lost because they lied, it’s as simple as that.” Molens says he has received death threats from tea party members since the incident. Gladney has become a regular speaker at area events, where he discusses the “savage beating” he received at the hands of “union thugs.” Paul D’Agrosa, the lawyer representing both McCowan and Molens, says his clients were exonerated because the matter was tried in court: “It wasn’t tried on the Internet. It wasn’t tried on the blogosphere.” D’Agrosa is referring to the innumerable videos of the incident, some heavily edited and altered, along with interviews of Gladney and commentaries made by a number of conservative bloggers (see August 7, 2009) as well as a number of national media figures (see August 7-8, 2009 and August 10, 2009), including some from Fox News (see Early November 2009). Keith Gladney, the twin brother of Kenneth Gladney, says of the verdict: “It’s atrocious. It’s obvious. The legal system here has come to the point where you can beat somebody up and still get off.” McCowan and Molens claimed in court that Gladney, who was selling anti-Obama buttons outside the forum, began the altercation by slapping McCowan’s hands when the two asked him about the merchandise he was selling. When Gladney slapped McCowan a second time, McCowan pushed him. According to Molens, Gladney then “started punching him in the face. I tried pulling him off.” The altercation escalated, with more shoving and punches being thrown; McCowan suffered a fractured shoulder during the altercation, but Gladney was the one claiming to have suffered extensive injuries. Video clips and testimony from onlookers supported McCowan and Molens’s version of events. McCowan, a Baptist minister, got chuckles in the courtroom when he testified that he didn’t turn the other cheek because it “hadn’t gotten hit yet.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7/12/2011; Media Matters, 7/13/2011]

Fox News’s Eric Bolling, hosting The Five, says that he remembers no terrorist attacks on the US during the Bush presidency. Bolling is either ignoring or forgetting that the 9/11 attacks, the most lethal and costly terrorist attacks in US history, occurred eight months into the Bush presidency. Since late 2009, two former Bush administration officials have also denied that 9/11 took place during the Bush presidency (see November 24, 2009 and December 27, 2009), as has former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor when his city was stricken (see January 8, 2010). A Las Vegas newspaper publisher has claimed no terrorist attacks occured during the Bush administration after 9/11, another falsehood perpetrated by Bolling (see January 3, 2010). One of the “five” participants in the roundtable discussion on the show is former Bush administration press secretary Dana Perino, who is one of the former administration officials who denied that 9/11 took place during Bush’s presidency. Bolling and the other participants, save for the single “liberal” at the table, Bob Beckel, are criticizing the Obama administration’s economic policies. The topic goes into a quick repudiation of the fact that the Bush administration used false claims about WMDs to drive the US into a war with Iraq, and Bolling shouts over the crosstalk: “America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008. I don’t remember any terrorist attacks on American soil during that period of time.” No one involved in the panel discussion corrects his misstatement. [Media Matters, 7/13/2011; Huffington Post, 7/14/2011]The Five is the newest Fox News offering, replacing the recently canceled show hosted by Glenn Beck. [Huffington Post, 7/14/2011] The next day, MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews derides what he calls Bolling’s “revisionist history” regarding 9/11. He plays a brief clip of Bolling making the statement, then sarcastically invites Bolling to “think back to 2001.” While playing a clip from the coverage of the 9/11 attacks, Matthews asks, “Does that trigger your memory?” [Media Matters, 7/14/2011] Hours after Matthews’s correction, Bolling says on The Five: “Yesterday I misspoke when saying that there were no US terror attacks during the Bush years. Obviously I meant in the aftermath of 9/11.” Bolling then swings to the attack, saying: “That’s when the radical liberal left pounced on us and me. [The progressive media watchdog Web site] Media Matters posted my error, saying I forgot about 9/11. No, I haven’t forgotten.” (Bolling is referring to a Media Matters article with the title: “‘Have You Forgotten?’ Conservatives Erase 9/11 From Bush Record,” which cites Bolling’s error among other “misstatements” and omissions by conservatives, and cites the numerous terror attacks that took place on US soil after 9/11 during the Bush presidency.) Bolling continues by saying he was in New York during the attacks, lost friends during the attacks, and comforted the children of friends who were terrified by the attacks. He concludes by saying, “Thank you, liberals, for reminding me how petty you can be.” [Media Matters, 7/14/2009] Shortly after Bolling’s statement on Fox, Media Matters posts another article, again citing the numerous domestic terrorism attacks that took place after 9/11, under the headline, “Eric Bolling Is Still Wrong.” [Media Matters, 7/14/2011]

Doug Lamborn. [Source: Huffington Post]Representative Doug Lamborn (R-CO) calls President Obama a “tar baby,” a racially explosive characterization, in an interview on a Colorado radio show. Lamborn says: “Even if some people say, ‘Well, the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that,’ they will hold the president responsible. Now, I don’t want to even have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get, you get it, you know, you get in and you are stuck and you are part of the problem now and you can’t get away. I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does, or not, he’ll still get, properly so, the blame because his policies for four years will have failed the American people. Look at the economic numbers.” Many Lamborn supporters quickly move to defend his statement, saying he is ignorant of the term’s racial connotations, but liberal radio host and author David Sirota writes, “[T]he ignorance plea would be absurd because he explicitly used the term to describe a black person.” Moreover, Sirota writes: “Tellingly, this openly derogatory epithet comes from not just any old politician. Lamborn is a United States congressman from Colorado Springs—one of the most conservative tea party-loving districts in America. In the hard-core right-wing political circles he runs in, describing a black person as a ‘tar baby’ is probably more than acceptable—it may even be celebrated, especially when aimed at a political opponent like President Obama.… [W]hile he may insist he didn’t mean to use the term the way he did, the comment reveals how various forms of racism are still being mainstreamed by the fringe right.” After his statement begins receiving media attention, Lamborn calls the characterization a “misunderstanding,” then issues an apology to Obama. Lamborn’s office says in a press release: “Congressman Doug Lamborn (CO-05) today sent a personal letter to President Barack Obama apologizing for using a term some find insensitive. Lamborn was attempting to tell a radio audience last week that the president’s policies have created an economic quagmire for the nation and are responsible for the dismal economic conditions our country faces. He regrets that he chose the phrase ‘tar baby,’ rather than the word ‘quagmire.’ The congressman is confident that the president will accept his heartfelt apology.” Sirota observes, “Sadly, rather than fully apologizing for using an obviously racist term, Lamborn felt the need to try to pretend that only ‘some’ find the words he used insensitive.” Mediaite reporter Frances Martel calls Lamborn’s characterization “an unfortunate idiom” and observes that Lamborn’s wish to have used “quagmire” instead of “tar baby” “a bit of a grammatical stretch, but an improvement.” [Salon, 8/1/2011; AM760, 8/1/2011; Mediaite, 8/2/2011] “Congressman Lamborn’s ignorant comments are intolerable,” says Rick Palacio, Colorado Democratic Party chairman. Lamborn says he believes Obama will accept his apology, telling a Denver reporter, “I absolutely intended no offense, and if this is at all on his radar screen, I am sure that he will not take offense and he’ll be happy to accept my apology because he is a man of character.” The White House issues no comment on the issue. [Denver Post, 8/2/2011] In response to the protests outside his office in Colorado Springs, Lamborn implements a “no-protesting” rule for his office, posting a sign that reads: “Private Property—No Soliciting, No Protesting, No Loitering.” Sirota says of the sign: “A US congressman should not be declaring his public taxpayer-funded Congressional office ‘private property’ and shouldn’t be putting a sign out telling his constituents they have no right to peaceably assemble and protest. That’s just fundamentally un-American.” [Huffington Post, 8/15/2011]

Pat Delany. [Source: Addiego, Rudder and Delany]New Jersey Assemblyman Pat Delany (R-LD8) resigns from his position after his wife, Jennifer Delany, sent an email to Carl Lewis, the former Olympic gold medalist who is running as a Democrat for a state Senate seat. Lewis is African-American; the email from Jennifer Delany is seen by many as having a racist slant. On July 7, Jennifer Delany responded to a routine mass email from the Lewis campaign with the following: “Imagine, not having to pay NJ state income taxes.… It must be nice. Imagine getting a court ruling overturned so your name could get put on the ballot. Imagine having dark skin and name recognition and the nerve to think that equalled [sic] knowing something about politics. Sure, knowing someone with fat purse strings is nice, but you have no knowledge. Remove my email. To think you STOLE my email and name from a complaint letter. I’m reporting you as SPAM.” She referred to a controversy surrounding Lewis’s residency in New Jersey; the former California resident was ruled ineligible for the race by New Jersey’s top elections official, Republican Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno. Lewis challenged her ruling in state and federal courts, and though a federal appeals court allowed his name to appear on June primary ballots, and he won that primary, the case remains unsettled. In late August, Pat Delany will issue a statement after the press learns of his wife’s email to Lewis that states: “I am deeply disappointed in my wife’s decision to send that email to Mr. Lewis’ campaign; it does not reflect my personal beliefs whatsoever. In an attempt to repair the serious damage this has caused to our marriage, and to protect our kids from public humiliation, I decided to leave public life. On behalf of my family, we sincerely apologize to Mr. Lewis for any pain this caused him.” Delany resigns after learning of his wife’s email, and informs the Burlington County Republican Committee that he will not run for the seat in 2012. Sources will say Delany wants to protect his children from the possible impact of the story if it becomes public knowledge. Committee chairman Bill Layton and senior committee officials agree to “let [Delany] go quietly.” Publicly, Delany says that his reason for resigning centers on an unspecified family issue; the press will not learn about his wife’s email until almost two weeks later. Layton later says: “Former Assemblyman Pat Delany’s wife inexplicably sent an offensive and racist email in response to a routine email from Carl Lewis’ campaign; her actions were inexcusable. To his credit, Pat voluntarily disclosed the email to me after he found out about it. In an attempt to protect his young children from a hurtful and embarrassing public spectacle involving their mother, Pat decided he would step down from the Assembly and not seek election to a full term this November. After much deliberation, I agreed to let Pat leave public life without disclosing the reasons for his sudden departure to the press beyond the fact that he was dealing with a serious family issue. In this case, that issue was the severe damage done to his marriage in the aftermath of his wife’s decision to send this offensive email. While it may have been politically expedient to publicly throw Pat under the bus, I believe letting him walk away quietly was the honorable, compassionate thing to do for someone who personally had done nothing wrong. At the same time, I was very clear with Pat from the beginning that if he chose to stay on the ballot, the Burlington County Republican Party would have withdrawn our support. The Burlington County Republican Party has a proud tradition of being the most inclusive, diverse Republican organization in the state and it’s something we are extremely proud of. On behalf of the party, I offer Mr. Lewis our apologies for any pain this issue may cause him or his family, and we stand with all Burlington County residents who believe this kind of language has no place in society or in public discourse.” The Lewis campaign will refuse to comment on the email. [PolitickerNJ, 8/22/2011; Associated Press, 8/22/2011] Delany is a small business owner and a seven-year Navy veteran. [Addiego, Rudder and Delany, 2011]

Researchers David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, the authors of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, conducted extensive polling and research on the ideology and beliefs of those who consider themselves affiliated with the “tea party” movement for their book. Campbell and Putnam write that their findings indicate what many have long believed: that by and large, the American “tea party” movement is made up of people who populate the right wing of the Republican Party. Moreover, they note, their and other polling indicates that the “tea party” is fighting an increasing tide of American disapproval. Within the last year, the number of people who label themselves as “opponents” of the “tea party” movement has doubled to around 40 percent, while those considering themselves “supporters” have dwindled to around 20 percent. In the authors’ polling, the “tea party” movement ranks lower than Republicans or Democrats in favorability, and even lower than groups such as atheists and Muslims. Their approval numbers are similar to those of the Christian Right. “Tea party” members tend to be overwhelmingly white, and their tolerance and approval of immigrants and minorities are significantly lower than even mainstream Republicans. They embrace many positions taken by so-called “social conservatives”—strong opposition to abortion, for example, and strong support for increasing the role of religion in politics. The authors write, “The tea party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.” “Tea party” members tend to support Republican presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rick Perry (R-TX), who proclaim their affinity for religion in politics. However, mainstream Americans tend to frown on increasing the role of religion in politics. According to the authors’ research, while the media narrative has portrayed the “tea party” movement as what they term “nonpartisan political neophytes,” in fact the early members of the movement were what the authors call “highly partisan Republicans.” Today, they observe, “past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of tea party support today.” The authors conclude: “On everything but the size of government, tea party supporters are increasingly out of step with most Americans, even many Republicans. Indeed, at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, today’s tea party parallels the anti-Vietnam War movement which rallied behind George S. McGovern (D-SD) in 1972. The McGovernite activists brought energy, but also stridency, to the Democratic Party—repelling moderate voters and damaging the Democratic brand for a generation. By embracing the tea party, Republicans risk repeating history.” [New York Times, 8/16/2011]

Liberal columnist Joan Walsh uses a recent op-ed by authors and researchers David Campbell and Robert Putnam (see August 16, 2011) to ask why the media portrays the “tea party” movement as a powerful new force of non-partisan advocates of small government, when research shows that the movement is, as Walsh and others have long argued, largely formed of right-wing social conservatives. Walsh writes: “It’s great to have data, but this is something a lot of us believed all along—the tea party was the Republican base dressed up in silly costumes. Why was the media so quick to declare them a vital new force in politics?” Walsh points to the early involvement of the billionaire Koch brothers (see July 3-4, 2010 and August 30, 2010), lobbying groups such as FreedomWorks (see April 8, 2009 and April 14, 2009) and Americans for Prosperity (see Late 2004), and Fox News, whom she says did early and “energetic publicity for… tea party rallies” (see March 23-24, 2009, April 6-13, 2009, April 6-7, 2009, April 8, 2009, April 13-15, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 16, 2009, May 13-14, 2009, July 28, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 8, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 28, 2009, September 1, 2009, September 12, 2009, September 18, 2009, Early November 2009, and May 22, 2011). Former Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck helped start one of the earliest nationwide “tea party” organizations, the “9-12 movement” (see March 13, 2009 and After). The first “tea party” rally Walsh attended, in San Francisco in April 2009, was sponsored by right-wing talk radio station KSFO and featured speakers such as Melanie Morgan, who, Walsh recalls, “whipped the crowd into an anti-government frenzy that day.” Many “birthers”—people who insist that President Obama is not the legitimate president because he is not an American citizen—were on hand. Race is a big issue for many “tea party” members, Walsh writes: while Obama’s race is a bone of contention for many “tea partiers,” “it’s worth noting that these are the same people who’ve been fighting the Democratic Party since the days of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the beginning of the War on Poverty, almost 50 years ago. They associate those long overdue social reforms with giving folks, mainly black people, something they don’t deserve. I sometimes think just calling them racist against our black president obscures the depths of their hatred for Democrats, period.” [Salon, 8/17/2011] Walsh is echoing similar claims made by Mother Jones columnist Kevin Drum almost a year ago (see September 2010).

Allen West. [Source: Newscom / Zumawire]US Representative Allen West (R-FL), a hard-right African-American conservative who won the 2010 race for his seat with a large contingent of “tea party” support, accuses black Democrats of being “overseers” on what he calls a “21st century plantation.” West says he is a “modern-day Harriet Tubman” leading people away from the “plantation.” West, discussing unemployement issues among black Americans with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, says: “So you have this 21st Century plantation… where the Democrat party [sic] has forever taken the black vote for granted, and you have established certain black leaders who are nothing more than the overseers of that plantation. And now the people on that plantation are upset because they’ve been disregarded, disrespected, and their concerns are not cared about. So I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman to kind of lead people on the Underground Railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility.” West, a member of the heavily Democratic Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), agrees with Ingraham when she says that Democratic members of the CBC such as Maxine Waters (R-CA) and Barbara Lee function as “plantation boss[es].” He adds civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to his list of “overseers,” and accuses Jackson, Sharpton, and others of bowing to the wishes of white liberals. “What you end up having—I’m going to be brutally honest—is that white liberals have turned over to certain leaders or ‘perceived leaders’ in the black community, like a Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee, and said, you know, pacify and keep the black community firmly behind us, regardless of the failures of our social welfare policies.” Black Democrats have done nothing to address the issue of rampant unemployment among African-Americans, he says: “That’s the absence of this ‘leadership’ in the black community, which as I say are nothing more than overseers of this 21st century plantation.” West later issues a statement clarifying his “Harriet Tubman” analogy: “Harriet Tubman is known for her efforts to rescue slaves and bring them off of the plantations to freedom. It took one person to begin a process which eventually led to the end of slavery. Today in the black community, we see individuals who are either wedded to a subsistence check or an employment check. Democrat [sic] physical enslavement has now become liberal economic enslavement, which is just as horrible. When unemployment is at more than 15 percent in the black community and we see the vicious cycle of fatherless children generation after generation, we need to find a new path. I am willing to stand up for the conservative principles that I believe can help move our community forward.” Lee spokeswoman Kristal DeKleer responds, “Congressman West’s comments are absurd on their face, and are simply another in a long stream of incendiary comments designed to fan the flames of the extreme right while they continue to do nothing to create jobs and address the tremendous disparities we face in this nation.” Waters says of West’s comments: “It’s a little bit outrageous. It’s a little bit ridiculous” and “hard to respond to.” Waters also notes that she and other CBC members were at a CBC-sponsored job fair in Atlanta, where West’s brother Arlen West, unemployed for two months, came looking for a job; according to Waters, Arlen West told job fair staffers that when he asked his brother for assistance in finding a job, Allen West advised him to go to the CBC job fair. West, interviewed by MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, says that his brother’s incendiary rhetoric is “not productive.” Asked about his advice to his brother, West tells Schultz’s producers in a statement that he has “stood by” his brother like millions of other Americans have been forced to do, saying that he has given his brother “suggestions and encouragement” on finding a job. He then blames “the economic policies of President Obama” for his brother’s inability to find a job along with others in “the black community.” In a rejoinder, Schultz says to West, “You have not offered one jobs initiative” during his time as a congressman. “You have not put your name to one effort to get Americans back to work, other than to sit on the sidelines and heckle the president, and heckle the Democrats, and complain about the economy, but you haven’t done a damn thing about it. In fact, you told your brother to go to a jobs fair that was hosted by the Democrats. So hypocritical, isn’t it?” [New York Times, 5/4/2010; Huffington Post, 8/18/2011; USA Today, 8/18/2011; MSNBC, 8/18/2011]

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